Spring Sports Update

Sandwiched around our spring break trip to China, the kids’ spring sports seasons have been going full speed, winding up their respective regular seasons this past weekend.

Kelly has had a great time with her “Penn State” volleyball team. They have a lot of talent, get along well together, and have knowledgeable but nurturing coaches. They lost only one match during the season (in the last game, unfortunately). The team they lost to, Minnesota, lost their only match to Hawaii, which suffered its only loss at the hands of… Penn State. Our girls will be seeded second in the championship tournament, and will play their first tournament game this Saturday.

The season has been particularly fun for me, because I have been given the opportunity to help a little bit of practice, which has often involved getting into the game to play. Several of the girls also like to stay after practice to play pickup games that I and a couple of the other parents have participated in. More than once we stayed almost an hour after practice playing volleyball just for fun. I have the scabs on my knees to prove it.

Coaching matters. Not just Xs and Os, but style, especially for girls. This past week, after our practice was over, Kelly and one of her teammates stayed behind to work on their servers with me while a rival team held its practice in the next court. Their practice consisted essentially of a scrimmage, but they were a couple of players short, so the coach invited our girls to join in. Our two players played consistently well, passing the ball to the center position, making sets and generally showing that they knew what they were doing, much better than the players on the team they were helping out. More tellingly, their coach berated his players for everything they did wrong, although about the only thing he seemed to be concerned with is that they called out “mine!” if they were going to play the ball. It was immediately obvious to me (and Kelly) that his team is unified – against him. I saw more than one pair of shoulders slump when he lit into his girls for failing to call for the ball, regardless of whether it had been a good play. In my limited but growing experience with youth sports, I have found that boys can be challenged, but girls need to be built up. It sounds pat and condescending, but the evidence is in full view. Kelly would not be as fervently enthusiastic about volleyball if she had to play for a coach that always criticized rather than taught and encouraged.

Michael’s baseball season, which began in January, finally ended Tuesday night. Our A’s finished up with a 10-5 regular-season record. This past week was particularly heavy, with a practice on Friday, games on Saturday and Sunday, and another game on Tuesday (with practices to come on Thursday (today) and Saturday and the first postseason tournament game on Sunday). Although they finished with a great record, coming in second in the league, it has been something of an up-and-down year for our boys. Some days the offense is overwhelming, and other days it disappears entirely. Some days our defense is solid and intelligent, and other days we can’t catch a ball with a butterfly net, and have no idea what to do with the ball once we get it. Over the weekend, we blew out the Yankees on Saturday, then faced them again on Sunday and squeaked out an incredibly tense 13-12 extra-inning come from behind victory. On Tuesday, though, the first-place Cardinals finished their season sweep of the A’s in a game in which we could do nothing right. The positive to take out of those last three games is that we were missing one of our top three players, and our best player was stuck in a horrible slump on both sides of the ball. For his part, Michael played a lot of second base, a key defensive position. He also recovered his batting stroke, which went through a low spot halfway through the season when he struck out once in two consecutive games, his only strikeouts of the year. Like most of his teammates, however, he did not play particularly well in the last game, although he showed off a strong arm from right field with several pinpoint throws all the way to the pitcher.

Michael, like his teammates, has developed tremendously as a baseball player over the course of this season. His greatest improvement has probably been in his arm strength. At the beginning of the season, he threw across his body without much velocity. That still put him ahead of many of his teammates, but he could barely get the ball across the infield. Now, after hours of throwing with me as well as at practice, his arm is much stronger, and is very accurate. He may not be big and strong enough to pitch next year, but his accuracy may give him an opportunity to try it.

Even if the coaches sometimes get upset the boys for appearing to regress toward the end of the season, they know they have a good team. They also know they have a very supportive group of parents. We routinely have a crew of four dads helping with assistant coaching duties on game days, plus another few dads on call to help with field setup when we are the home team. Our grounds crew team shows up an hour before the game, which contrasts starkly with most of the other teams, which seemed to scramble to put together a grounds crew with one or two people half an hour before the game. Since field prep involves dragging the dirt with a metal screen behind an ATV, hosing down the infield, and laying down a lot of chalk lines, it is not a trivial exercise, and the commitment of our team’s parents to helping out has been a testament to the commitment our families have made to the team. During the games, I have become the bench coach, getting the boys ready to bat and calling out defensive positions in between innings. I love being around the boys, encouraging them, getting to know them, building them up when they are down and celebrating with them when they succeed.

Now the real pressure cooker begins: tournament play. Both kids start this weekend. I hope I survive it.