How do we "peak interest" in fastpitch?

Peak Interet

"Peaking Interest" and dead periods are two different subjects in my opinion.

"Peaking interest" starts at the early ages. We have to get the girls playing and make the game fun. The key figure in this goal is the coaching and quality of the recreation program. We cannot "peak interest" once they are at the high school level - at that stage they are already interested or not. You can kill the interest at that age but hard to "peak interest" of a high school student that has not played the game for years.

The dead period debate relates to developing talent - not creating interest. If someone's interest is not peaked at the high school level, they're probably not going to play.

Isn't part of the dead period rule to protect the girls from being limited to one sport - I'm not sure?

 

..my definition of peaking interest is providing ANYTHING that makes a kid want to play Rec. Ball, middle school, HS, and TB i.e. How do we help perpetuate fastpitch as we know it now (and hopefully it will continue to grow larger) by what we as parents and coaches can offer.
CMM, you are in the mix of the "folks who actually know a thing or two about sports".
Give us a hand here.
Fish

 

form a commitee...

Couple years ago I was recruited to coach in the Raleigh P&R and turned it down. I'm not a coach. But I had suggested to the P&R softball director about offering coaching and player clinics to help improve development. They really liked the idea but squshed it because they felt it might cost too much affecting their bottom line. There is POWER in numbers. People can not be afraid to expand. There is a way to make things economical and still make them work. All you need to do is set it up, advertise it, and look at the numbers. I bet any number of HS or College coaches local to the area could offer things threw Parks and REC. REC leagues really feed the middle schools which feed the high schools. TB is for the one's who want to take it to the next level, but not necessarly college. If there is a will there is a way. JMHO.

 

the answer to this is simple.... build a culture of winning in your community from the first time they hit the dirt at 8, 10 or whatever.

 

If the cost of a clinic they are referring to is the cost of a coach(es) I'm pretty sure they can get all the volunteers they would need. I'm not talking about a season-long coach, however; although that could possibly happen also.

Because they use a lot of parents as coaches what I suggest is that at minimum they have a session for ALL the coaches who intend to coach during their season. That's a minimum requirement. Ideally, immediately after the session with the coaches there would be another session with ALL players and ALL coaches from ALL teams together.

This could be done in a minimum of 3 hours but preferably around 6 hours. The coaches session could be like 9-10:00. The players would not be scheduled to be there until 10. The coaches would then participate as helpers with the players for the rest of the clinic.

Follow-up clinics wouldn't take as long if they were interested. Say one or two hours. Could even be done as one of their practices.

I don't think there would be a lot of trouble finding volunteers. It's not always about the money everytime.

 

No offense but that is not an answer, that is a goal - and a good one.

I have a idea that Surrey County knows how to do it and whatever they are doing needs to be studied. The answer is up there. Consistently, year after year, they produce winning programs that succeed without recruiting from other counties.

Their Little League program is second to none in NC - they have consistently been one of the top teams in NC and have won the Little League World Series a couple times... against FL, TN, GA, TX, CA, etc.... Their HS teams are usually at or near the top of the heap.

I think they are now getting into the Community College scene too and I would bet money they will be the top contenders in that arena too.

My guess is that their success is from a strong sense of community that embraces softball from the young ages. They embrace their rec level teams with a lot of spirit - go to a Little League All Star game up their and just watch. But most importantly they have a core group of people that have taken a leadership role in making it happen... matched up with the skills to see it through.

 

the point I was making was with the emphasis on winning... build a winner and everyone wants to be a part of it. I coached a lot of rec ball over the years.. softball, baseball and basketball and it was always my contenion that a kid would rather NEVER play and be a part of a winner than play every inning or every second of a contest and have their brains beat out.

You point to the LL progam at East Surry and that is a great example. You can drive by the ES field anytime during season and see some dad on a bucket trying to develop the next Brooke Honeycutt or Haley Shelton. Why do they do this.. because they know they are going to play on a winner and the competative nature of us as human beings wants our daughters to be that hero. I am sure the feeder program at North Moore is competative as well and we all can see what AC is doing... it all started at some point with one person or small group of people determined to make a difference; someone then chooses to carry the torch for the next group.

success breeds success.

 

Excellent post

.....thanks, i knew you had it in you. Now, dig a little deeper and see if you can give us a little sumpin sumpin as to just how and why Surry County gets it done. Thanks
Fish