Pitching and Pitchers Discussion Fast pitch showdowns and 14u pitching distance

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Probably late on this, but just saw that to deal with the different pitching distance for different sanctions, Fastpitch Showdown sponsored tournaments (Capitol City Showdown,...) will be splitting 14u into separate tournaments for 43 or 40 feet depending on team prefernce. Just curious, given the choice whom would choose 40 and who would choose 43 and why?

 

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No question, 43' if your kid has any plans for high school pitching. 40' at 14u is hanging on too long, and should be abandoned IMO. Switching to 43' across the board after the 12u age group makes sense to me.

 

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No question, 43' if your kid has any plans for high school pitching. 40' at 14u is hanging on too long, and should be abandoned IMO. Switching to 43' across the board after the 12u age group makes sense to me.

I agree. True 14U pitchers will already have pitched a freshman season at 43' or they will be incoming freshman. It will be the first and last time for an incoming freshman to get use to pitching at 43' until she's forced to in school. It would have been nice if they would have switched last summer.

 

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My dd is an 8th grader and is a 2nd year 14U, so she'll be pitching 40 feet for jr high, then switching back and forth between 40 and 43 all summer. So I imagine she'll be ready for anything.

 

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In PA jr high will be pitching at 43 just like the high school

 

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My dd is an 8th grader and is a 2nd year 14U, so she'll be pitching 40 feet for jr high, then switching back and forth between 40 and 43 all summer. So I imagine she'll be ready for anything.

8th grade should definately be at 43'. Switching back and forth, whether anyone agrees with me or not is not a good thing unless she just wants to go out and throw gas at 40'. Got the bugs worked out with my dd before she hit the field this past summer. If a pitcher has a good drop, which my dd does, she's gonna have a hard time keeping it from bouncing off the back of the plate at 43'. Pitching both is gonna be a mess.

 

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IMO having a 40' plate and a 43' plate is pretty silly. I would be in favor of moving the 12U distance to 43', but keeping the smaller ball at 12U. IMO it would benefit pitchers with average to small sized hands to have 2 more years with a ball they can actually grip properly and then transition to the bigger ball at 14U. Would also IMO improve catching at 12U because more catchers would have the ability to throw out stealing runners with a slightly smaller and lighter ball and all fielders might benefit from learning to throw with a ball they can grip.

 

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IMO having a 40' plate and a 43' plate is pretty silly. I would be in favor of moving the 12U distance to 43', but keeping the smaller ball at 12U. IMO it would benefit pitchers with average to small sized hands to have 2 more years with a ball they can actually grip properly and then transition to the bigger ball at 14U. Would also IMO improve catching at 12U because more catchers would have the ability to throw out stealing runners with a slightly smaller and lighter ball and all fielders might benefit from learning to throw with a ball they can grip.

That means the pitchers moving up to 12U go from 35' to 43'? No, thanks!

I can appreciate you trying to mitigate this by staying with the 11" ball, but I don't think the size of the ball is much of an issue for the 12U pitchers and fielders. My DD played rec as a first-year 12 and there were only a couple of girls out of 100+ that would have benefited from playing with a smaller ball.

 

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Wasn't women's pro fastpitch at time considering pitching the 11 inch ball from 46 ft and moving the bases to 65 feet?

I only bring this up because one option would be to let the 11U and 12U teams pitch the 11 inch ball from 40 ft. This would make a lot more sense if there were enough 11U teams but with most assocaitions at 2 year intervals, I don't see any changes for the 12U group--it has certainly worked well.

As for tournaments,with multiple age groups involved, having different distances creates a scheduling problem, whereas in the past all age groups pitched from 40 ft.

 

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That means the pitchers moving up to 12U go from 35' to 43'? No, thanks!

I can appreciate you trying to mitigate this by staying with the 11" ball, but I don't think the size of the ball is much of an issue for the 12U pitchers and fielders. My DD played rec as a first-year 12 and there were only a couple of girls out of 100+ that would have benefited from playing with a smaller ball.

I agree, pitching 12U from 43' would look like they were playing slow pitch only with walk after walk. No one would benefit from that, pitchers, fielders, and certainly not the batters.

 

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In my opinion, they should have just left things the way they were. Every time they tamper with the game it takes away from it and creates all kinds of additional unforeseen problems like are being discussed here now.

I didn't hear anyone complaining that the 40' pitching distance was too short five years ago. It has worked well for decades and now someone comes along and decides it has to be changed. I wish they would just leave the game alone, and stop trying to fix something was never broken in the first place!

To all those making these decisions.........LEAVE IT ALONE NOW, YOU'VE DONE ENOUGH!

 

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Good points Roto and I am almost agreeing.... the only problem is that the game is changing so rules and formats need to change to keep up.
I am in my 21st year and have seen drastic differences just in the past 5 years. Better bats, better and lots more instructions, more competition, more and better training facilities..... Winter practices???? In NW Ohio it was almost non-existent 5-8 years ago. Winter tournaments?? Spring and fall ball all came about over the past 10 years or so unless you played for your high schoolers. Now we have 3rd graders playing spring, fall, summer and winter softball.

 

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Remember at one time the QB in football was just another running back? No forward passes... all running. And of course back then they would NEVER have dreamed of selling their gold pants...

 

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Good points Roto and I am almost agreeing.... the only problem is that the game is changing so rules and formats need to change to keep up.
I am in my 21st year and have seen drastic differences just in the past 5 years. Better bats, better and lots more instructions, more competition, more and better training facilities..... Winter practices???? In NW Ohio it was almost non-existent 5-8 years ago. Winter tournaments?? Spring and fall ball all came about over the past 10 years or so unless you played for your high schoolers. Now we have 3rd graders playing spring, fall, summer and winter softball.

Yes, I get it, the game is changing, better bats and training and so on........the reason, as I understand, for the pitching distance change is to create more offense. This is the stated purpose, not safety. If it were safety, they would make the pitching mask mandatory for pitchers and infield corners. Therefore, since the change is obviously not safety, why make it easier for hitters, as you stated above, and I agree by the way, who are getting better than ever?

Look at professional and D1 fast pitch, any more most of the runs are scored with home runs. Is that really what they want in high school ball?

This is just the start, there will be some unintended consequence of this change and of course they will have to make an "adjustment" to compensate, to extend the bases for example. It's only a matter of time until they ruin the game.

I've seen it happen in other sports like volleyball, since rally scoring there are no more amazing come from behind victories a team can win a game by doing nothing at all to earn the point. Every game takes the same amount of time, servers can't be or are not really aggressive when the other team is at game point because one bad serve and the other team wins. They've ruined the game in my opinion.

 

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My dd is in 7th grade, and we have been practicing at 43' since fall ball ended. Figured that is where we are going to end up anyway, and where she plays at 40' it should give her added zip on her pitch.