I agree with all of the advice above. No music. And as someone else said, if there is music, keep it very low. One girl sent me a video and asked if I would respond with my thoughts on her video. I responded and included my evaluation of her choice of music. She had a Brooks and Dunn song and some other country artist. Not being a country music fan for the most part, I panned them. She responded wondering what I was talking about. She had no idea about what music was in her video. Just the other day I received a video in the mail, along with a package of Orville Reddenbocker microwave popcorn. Now if they would just start mailing me Healthy Choice or one of those other frozen dinners I'd be all set.
Anyway, here are the biggest mistakes I see in the videos...
1. Girls aren't aggressive in going after the ball, whether grounders or fly balls.
2. Never get a good look at a girl's arm strength. I like to see a few throws from start to finish. Outfielders often just lob the ball into second or third base or a cutoff person 50 feet away. I'd love to see outfielders show their arm from medium-deep CF to third base and home plate, without a cutoff person. I see it on maybe 1 out of 10 videos.
3. Someone mentioned it above, too many girls do not run home to first and show the entire thing so we can time it ourselves. Go ahead and hit a ball and run to first and show the whole thing, including the girl hitting the base.
4. With infielders, I don't need many balls, but I do like to see different skills. Regular grounders, slow grounders, one or two to the left and to the right. Throws to second and double play footwork are good. I like to see one or two tough popups, especially for shortstops down the left field line and second basemen down the right field line. The popups are on almost no videos. Again, I want to see a couple of throws in their entirety.
5. Again with infielders, everyone wants to show a backhand and most end up backhanding balls that have no business being backhanded. And most of the backhand form is bad, anyway. I'd leave it out unless you are really good at it by staying low and fielding the ball where it should be fielded.
6. With hitting, most videos have a side view, which is good. But then it varies from there. Personally, I also like to see a catcher's view and be able to see where the ball is going. I may be in the minority there, but I'm not smart enough to tell exactly how hard someone hits the ball from only a side view. We understand some machine balls fly farther than others and all of that.
7. About 1/3rd of the videos I receive have girls who roll their wrists way too early, producing nothing but weak ground balls. And probably 1/2 of the videos, maybe more, have girls squishing the bug.
8. One sac bunt is plenty, at least as far as I'm concerned. I could do with none. If you can play in college at any level, you should be capable of at least looking like you can bunt.
9. Some videos don't have the girl introducing herself. I like to see the introduction.
There are more, but that's all I can think of for now.
