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The end of the year is always a good time to reflect on where you’re at and where you’re going and so it is with softball.
We asked a panel of top head and assistant club coaches what they thought of where fastpitch is today, what’s going right, what’s not and where the sport is generally from their vantage point.
Here are their comments on the direction of the game today…
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“What is the State of the Game today?” Now there is the Million Dollar question!
We are in an interesting time for our sport. The on-the-field play has never been better; the caliber of play and coaching we are seeing is nothing short of awesome. We have more exposure than ever, whether it’s on TV with ESPN, sites like Extra Inning Softball or via social media coverage. There is very little that isn’t covered, which is unthinkable considering where we were just five to seven years ago.
However, outside the lines, it is a mess. There are so many layers to this as well.
On the travel level, coaches are faced day-in and day-out with a society of entitlement and selfishness that we have never seen and we have to do our best to try to work with these athletes and correct this behavior before they move to the next level.
Then again, we are seeing the same behavior out of many “coaches” as well. So many people are trying to make a living off of the athlete and family who I wouldn’t trust to park my car, much less train my daughter. I am all for someone receiving compensation for delivering a quality service, but there are too many gluttonous people out there preying on the uninformed with middle-of-the-road training that can be pulled off of YouTube.
For the athletes themselves, I love the fact that we took some pressure off of young players, moving the recruiting window back to a more reasonable time frame. I personally would like to see some adjustments to the early recruiting rules to allow more communication and relationship building outside of camps.
Otherwise, I believe that what we are seeing now in the way of transfers in the collegiate game will be referred to as the “good ole days.” I don’t think we saw it this year, but I believe the day is coming that at midnight on Sept. 1st, schools will be giving athletes (whom they don’t even have any relationships built with) days or even hours to decide on an offer before they have to move to the next athlete on their list.
Families will make many uninformed decisions based on the outside perception of the coach/school and they will end up at a place that isn’t the right fit… well, until they transfer anyway!
— Greg Borzilleri, Athletics – Mercado/Greg
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I think softball is definitely moving in a good direction for the most part. The growth of the game, led by passionate driven people who truly love the game as I do, is taking the game to new levels.
I would like to see more focus on growing the post-college game here in the U.S. I’d like to see growth of the NPF, or some version of that, so players who want to play this game as a professional have more options to do that.
The amount of fans you see at college softball games and in the TV audience the college softball World Series attains certainly shows a strong appetite for this sport and its amazing athletes.
A partnership with MLB, like the WNBA did with the NBA, would be a great start. If I was running the league, I would focus on professional softball played during the summer in strong softball-loving college towns where they have a strong following already. Teams could play in those stadiums and each team would most certainly have a handful of players drafted from that local college’s team.
Fans would come back out for the summer and hopefully sponsorships and TV time would grow. Who wouldn’t want to watch the LA Ladies vs. the Alabama Red Tide or the Gainesville Gators vs the Baton Rouge Ballers, etc.?
I think there is a lot of focus on the Olympics and the international game, but the Olympics are every four years and more focus should be put on the growth of the professional game here in the United States.
— TJ Goelz, Tampa Mustangs – TJ
