Softball is a growing sport for girls within the United States. Whether you are an 8-year-old girl, to a senior in college softball, it’s a sport that many are attached too. A new form of hitting came into play during the 2005 Women’s College Series. Slap hitting is a new form of hitting that changed the way the game of fast-pitch softball is being played. Slapping changed the way coaches and players think about how they are going to field a slap hitter. This form of hitting is becoming a major role within fast-pitch softball. When I got the opportunity to learn how to slap hit I was excited to gain this ability. With practice, patience and determination, I began to learn the hitting style that I use today. Slap hitting over the years has …show more content…
As I started to grow as a player, I wanted to take my level of play to the next level. Making the transition from recreational ball, to highly competitive select softball came natural for me to compete against. I became more confident with the level of ball I was playing when I wanted to start doing something that many people couldn’t do. Something was different that I noticed was some players ran through the left side of the box while batting. That’s something that would make me unique, and I knew that this is something that I wanted to learn how to do. I asked my coach if I could learn how to slap and if it was the best thing for me to learn at the time. He explained how to bat like that to me, and gave me the confidence that I could do it. Learning something that is not normal and natural for you can be very challenging. I would look up videos on how to slap from how to do the footwork along with how to hit correctly. For many years, I would go to a private hitting instructor every week to work on my slapping. Gradually, I would improve my hitting stills from the practice I was putting in. Every game I had was an improvement, yet there were some bad days along with, whether it be I didn’t get a hit or striking out. Every game I would try to work on my placement on where I wanted to hit the
As I was growing up, my parents always wanted to find something to help me be active with other children. I was extremely shy and would not talk to anyone. At the age of six, I chose to try out for softball, but I was not sure if it was something I would continue to play. Softball has helped me break out of my comfort zone and talk to people, make lifelong friends, and be stronger as an individual. The older I got, the more open I was, but my first year of JV is what broke my shell.
GEORGETOWN, Texas – The Ladies never trailed in an 8-3 win in game one, but Centenary (8-9, 2-4 Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference) fell to Southwestern (12-8, 2-4 SCAC) 13-1 (five innings) in the nightcap as the two teams split a double header Saturday afternoon, March 17.
Just hours after capturing its first Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Tournament win in program history, five Centenary softball players were honored by the conference. In a vote by the SCAC coaches and announced at the Conference Softball Tournament Friday, April 22, five Ladies grabbed All-Conference honors.
The object of softball is to score runs by hitting the ball and touching all the bases without being tagged or thrown out. Softball games last for seven innings. The pitcher will pitch to a batter until one of four things happens: The batter gets three strikes against him/her. A strike occurs when the batter swings at a pitch but misses it or hits it foul with less than two strikes against him/her, or when the pitch passes through the strike zone but the batter does not swing at it. The pitcher throws four "balls," which are pitches that fail to pass through the strike zone and which are not swung at by the batter. In this case the batter "walks," meaning he or she is awarded first base. The pitcher hits the batter with a pitch. In this case,
Before I was 9 I had no interest in softball, but one day I decided I was going to play. My dad tried to teach me but we would always argue and I wouldn’t get anything done. My dad decided to get me lessons. I got good over the winter. I was placed on coach pitch softball, but got moved up because they couldn’t throw the ball fast enough for me to hit it. They moved me to 10 and under and did really well I played rec softball until I could play middle school softball. Also I am very fast and can out run a lot of people. I played middle school softball both years. Last year during tryouts the head coach realized how fast I was he made switch from right handed to left handed to slap hit. I can run from base to base in 2.7 seconds, there was only one person faster than me and she was a senior she ran them in 2.6 seconds. All of last season I spent pretty much relearning how to bat because slap hitting and hitting right handed is two completely different things. I spent the whole summer taking private lessons and now I am pretty good at slap hitting, but I can still improve a lot. My bat speed right handed was 75 plus mph but now it’s only about 55 mph. The most difficult thing about slapping is figuring out how to do all the different kinds. There’s soft slaps, hard slaps, drag slaps, and some more. I am a second baseman. Softball is a sport I love to play with my
Yogi Berra believed that, “Baseball is 90 percent mental and the other half is physical.” From my tenure as a college softball pitcher at Point Park University, I learned how imperative being mentally sound is to the game of softball. The legal field is a very demanding field. I know my experiences gained on the diamond will allow me to flourish in a field dependent upon mental toughness.
Do you want to be able to beat everyone at the next home run derby? Ok you may not go to any home run derbies or be in softball, but learning to swing a bat correctly can give you an upper hand and give you something to teach other people. When you are a parent and your kid wants to learn the sport of softball or baseball you will be able to teach them the perfect fundamentals in swinging a bat. There is a lot more to swinging a bat than what most people think. When you think about swinging a bat do you think about your feet, your head, your hands, or your hips? I don’t think most people do. Well these hitting fundamentals will teach you how to have the perfect swing and these four easy stages will help you to teach others and if you want to hit the farthest.
Softball ruled over my life from the time I was five years of age until I was fourteen. According to the people who had watched one of my games, I played first base phenomenally and had some wonderful at bats when I focused on centering my power to hit the ball with all the force I could muster. Unfortunately and fortunately, my father coached every team I played on from T-ball to fast-pitch. At every game, he observed my mechanics and hand-eye coordination, and this pulled memories of watching my brother hit numerous home runs and make game-winning outs from his mind. On nearly all of the car rides home, he would tell me “You remind me so much of Dusty. I see him the way you throw, in the way you hit the ball, and the way you present
Hard work never goes un-noticed, and although I did improve, I had acquired the label of ‘outfielder’. The position that wasn’t home to me, but I was forced to recognize as my spot on the field. My first year of Varsity softball arrived and I made it clear infield is where I wanted to be, but my coach’s confidence in me continued to lack to match the level of mine, along with the fact the returning third basemen was a veteran. And the outfield is where I was sent, yet again.
Since I was eights years old, I’ve been hitting a ball off a Tee. Sometimes it becomes repetitive and boring, but stepping into a live batters box is where all of that hard work comes into play. Growing up, my parents would always find someone to give me lessons or find a travel team that seemed to be a good fit for me. I was fortunate to have parents to push me to become a better athlete and support me at all of my sporting events. I’ve had several, and I mean several, batting, pitching, and fielding lessons. Because of my ability to quickly learn something after seeing it done once, I picked up how to become a
Softball is a sport that is known throughout the United States and the world. Softball originated on Thanksgiving Day in Chicago in 1887. The game was actually said to have begun as an indoor game. Softball was started by a group of men who had gathered at a club to watch the Harvard vs. Yale football game. When the news came that Yale had defeated Harvard, 17-8, one Yale supporter, overcome with enthusiasm, picked up an old boxing glove and threw it at a nearby Harvard alumni, who promptly tried to hit it back with a stick. This gave George Hancock, a reporter for the Chicago Board of Trade, an idea. He suggested a game of indoor baseball. Naturally, Hancock's friends thought he was talking about playing a game outdoors, not indoors.
Just because softball players don’t put the same stress on their arms doesn’t mean the arm motion they make is a natural movement, because of this, the league should put into place a certain amount of pitches they can throw. Baseball pitchers throw overhand in a sort of whipping motion that increases the velocity and how fast they can throw it. With this sort of movement, it puts a lot of stress on the elbow area causing many young players to get Tommy John’s surgery—where they replace the UCL in the elbow with a tendon taken from your hamstring or
Although the rules are printed in black and white, learning the physical aspects of softball was very challenging. Being an athletic person allowed me to catch on quickly. Everyone else on the team had already experienced softball two or three years before me. First I learned to catch, which was probably the hardest thing for me. It seemed like the ball was moving a 100 miles per hour aiming straight towards my face even though it was coming 20-25 miles per hour. When catching the ball, the thrower has to aim straight for my chest; which is where I should want to target my glove. Learning to bat might seem challenging but it’s not. Hitting from a tee is effortless because there is more concentration on the ball. That’s probably the best way to be trained. Than a coach may soft toss it. Focusing more on the coach’s hand where the ball was, helped me focus on what I was looking for when a pitcher pitched against me. Soon after, the coach started the pitching machine. Nine times out of ten, when it’s a player first time hitting off a pitching machine, she is afraid to get hit by the ball. A lot of the batters jump out the way of the batter’s box. I know I did. Hitting off the pitching machine and having someone toss is very accommodating. Utilizing the tee is probably the best thing to use overall. It allows the batter to focus on using proper mechanics. The last entity I learned was to throw. Throwing is not as problematic
Playing softball, you get fit. Being fit, makes people like their bodies, which makes people happier in general. When throwing the ball, you have to throw it harder than you would a baseball, which means you’re using more of your muscles than you would when throwing a baseball. As a result, your arms and body get toned, and running to catch the ball gets your legs worked out as well. When hitting the ball, you have
“Not everyone is going to see or accept you for who you are, and you have to accept that.” I was told this quote everyday by my mother. Today was no different, walking up to the raked field, quote on my mind , eyes on the fresh red clay, and the sound of my metal cleats against the concrete. I was ready for this day. After months of hard work from November to February , the tryouts for Central softball team were over. Over the span of four months, I pushed myself harder than I ever thought I could, but what I did never seemed to be enough for the team.