We have all had 24 hours now since our first tournament concluded and time to reflect on how the weekend went (I would have said we have all had 24 hours to warm up, but the 4 inches of snow outside may suggest otherwise). I won't speak for everyone here, but I felt like there were plenty of positives and negatives this weekend. Overall, I feel we were all disappointed in the final outcome of the tournament. None of us wanted to go over and lose every game. Unfortunately, that is what happened. It is now up to all of us: Coaches, Parents, and Players to evaluate what went right and what went wrong this weekend and to get better heading into our next tournament in two weeks.
Let's focus on some of the negatives first and then shift to the positives. I think one of the biggest differences between our Heaters team and the competition we saw this weekend was the play on the defensive side of the ball, especially on Sunday. As a team, we made too many errors (23 in all I believe) to allow us to stay competitive in those games. There are all kinds of contributing factors: the cold weather, our limited outside practice time, and our inexperience as a team in these sorts of tournaments. I'd also like to put a bulk of the blame on us, the coaches. We didn't do the best job we could at preparing the defense for this style of play and neglected some of the detailed parts of the game. We prepared them for a style of play that benefits them here in games at home, but does not prepare them to compete in tournaments on this level. We all want our kids to play at the highest level of their ability, and as a coaching staff, we need to coach the kids at a high level. One of the biggest things I learned from this weekend is that we must do a better job at coaching the defense how to do a better job at making outs, getting outs a lead bases, and minimizing runs and damage when we can. We have discussed, as a staff, that the focus of our next two weeks should be on the defensive side of things. Simple things like making good throws and catches will be an emphasis. And then we will also focus on things like hitting cutoff men, having those cutoff men make throws in to lead bases to stop advancing runners, and then focus on teaching kids how to try and catch fly balls. And if they can't catch them, then to do everything in their ability to keep the ball in front and hit the cutoff man. I feel we can, and will, look better defensively as the season progresses.
On the positive side of things, we were competitive in these games. Despite what the final score of the games on Sunday shows, those games were more competitive than they showed. On Saturday, we played with the team that finished 2nd overall in the tournament right up until the last inning. That team (the Young Guns from Cookeville, TN) had more experience in these travel style tournaments and we were a few key plays away from beating them. On Sunday, a few errors at costly times allowed our opponents to score more runs than they should have. You take those runs off the board, and those games are closer than the score shows. Offensively, we hit the ball very well and put the ball in play. Those hits will get better as each kid continues to practice and begins his lessons with Coach Longworth. The major difference in our balls in play not resulting in more runs was the defense played by the other teams. They kept us from scoring runs while we allowed them to score more runs.
Hopefully no one is too discouraged after this first weekend of play. We are all new at this. That includes us, the coaches. We learned a lot of valuable things from this first weekend of play. We learned things that we have to do to make the kids better. And that is what we are all in this for: To make these kids better baseball players.
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