The Great Britain softball programme has been reaping the benefits over the past few months from a partnership agreement between the European Softball Federation (ESF) and the US Amateur Softball Association (ASA) designed to help raise the quantity and quality of softball played in Europe.
The first fruits of this partnership for Britain came last May, when three top slowpitch coaches from Combat Sports spent a week in England teaching slowpitch hitting at league and tournament sessions around the country.
Then, in September, GB Under-19 Women's Head Coach Liz Knight and GB Under-16 Girls' Head Coach Sarah Jones got an opportunity to spend a week working with and learning from the coaching staff at the University of South Florida in Tampa, where the Head Coach is Ken Eriksen, who also coaches the US National Team
Amazing week
Sarah Jones said: "It was an absolutely amazing week that we spent working with Team USA’s Head Coach Ken Eriksen and the staff at the USF Bulls. The coaches were very open and went over and above to make our stay enjoyable and exciting. I learned a lot of things which I will adapt and bring into my own coaching repertoire for our GB girls."
Liz Knight added: "Everything about the programme, from the way they approached their warm-up, the pre-game preparation, game play and post-game was done with a high degree of professionalism. The coaches had lunch time meetings every day, and Sarah and I were included. This was a great opportunity to observe how they openly communicate about their programme. All the coaching staff went out of their way to ensure we had a great learning experience."
Early start
Practice days at USF get under way early, and Sarah and Liz plunged right into the routine during a busy first day that contained all the elements they were to observe during the week.
Liz said, "First we met with Coach Ken Eriksen and Assistant Coaches Stacey Heintz, Mo Triner and Volunteer Assistants Carmela Liwag and Kelly Confer. Then, at 7.30 am, the team started strength and conditioning training."
The team worked with strength and conditioning staff in a state-of-the-art training centre. The players used the speed ladder as a warm-up before moving on to the session's major focus, which was leg and core strength. To do this, the players broke into groups of three or four and each group had a trainer.
Team practice
The rest of the morning, starting at 8.30 am, consisted of on-field team practice. Liz Knight reported:
"All sessions started with a 25-minute block of batting progressions. Players work in small groups hitting off tees using Fonseca training bats. These are smaller wooden bats and the official training bat of Team USA. Although relatively new to softball, they have been used in baseball for some time. The progressions start by breaking a small slow swing at point of contact, progressing to full swings with Fonseca bats and then onto full swings using normal bats.
"The team then uses three batting tunnels to hit off coaches pitching from behind screens. Players are constantly swapping in and out, and an incredible amount of activity is done in 25 minutes."
Players then moved onto the field, where one of the strength and conditioning team took them through a dynamic warm-up, focusing on arms. Coach Eriksen spoke to the athletes about the importance of throwing mechanics and injury prevention before the players spent 15 minutes working on mechanics, including long toss.
Liz continued: "Thirty-five minutes was then spent on positional defensive play. Coach Heintz took the outfielders while Coach Eriksen and the other assistants worked with the infielders. There were always two drills going on at once and after several minutes the drills would change. This is a great way to ensure that the constant monotonous skill work needed is done in an interesting and challenging way. The amount covered in 35 minutes was incredible.
"The team then spent 20 minutes on defensive run-downs and Coach Eriksen kept it very simple but effective. There was a lot of learning going on within the playing group because it's autumn and there were several new players on the squad, but within 20 minutes the team was executing run-downs far more effectively. Each training the team spends time on either run-downs, bunt defense or relays, as these are three situations that commonly cost teams if not executed well."
The final 70 minutes of training was spent with the squad broken into four preplanned groups rotating between live hitting on the field, live hitting in the batting cages and infield and outfield work.
"In four hours of training an incredible amount had been covered," Liz said, "and it was only the first session!"
Sports Psychology
Sarah Jones reported on a sports psychology session held later in the day:
"This was my first meeting with the girls and I was really impressed with how they had started to accept the new players to the team without really knowing that much about them.
"Dr Yussef did a 'get to know your teammates' game with them where each player had to submit five interesting facts about herself to him, but they weren’t allowed to talk about their facts with anyone else. From this he made up a sentence about each player and gave them a questionnaire where they had to read the statements and guess who each player was.
"Then he made them get into teams, but they couldn’t be with someone who played the same position: e.g. no pitchers with catchers, no second basemen together, and, they couldn’t be in the same year and they couldn’t be rooming together. So they were all put into groups where they weren’t already friends. Then he read out the statements and asked them to identify the players they described. This involved a group discussion, but the player wasn’t allowed to say "it was me" until asked.
"Coach Eriksen clearly valued these sessions and he was there at the end to get a summary from Dr Yussef. I’m definitely going to use something like this in the GB programme."
Game time
Later that day, Liz and Sarah watched a 14-inning scrimmage game where all four pitchers threw and everyone rotated through different positions.
Sarah said: "The advantage of the 14 innings straight (in the coaches' eyes) was to have everyone playing at the same time with the chance to try different combinations if they wanted to. They did have a 15-minute break after the first seven innings and everyone had a chance to sit out at one point or another.
"It was a full-on first day, but one where I learned lots of little things and ways to adapt drills I already do to make them more streamlined and quicker."
The rest of the week was spent attending training sessions, coaches' meetings and games, and the time went quickly.
"Giving European coaches this kind of experience through the ESF-ASA partnership is a great idea," Sarah said, "and I know it will benefit a lot of European coaches as it has the two of us."