Oh what a blast we had. But after working out with several of the girls my back was shot. I was pitching in the batting cage and picking up all those balls showed my age! Finally, I made them do all the work!
What a nice day leading up to my birthday. Work was rather un-eventful. I had a dentist appointment at 4. I always fall asleep or come close to falling asleep in the chair. That was relaxing. Then off to Carter’s baseball game. I helped a little in the dugout, prepping the batters to grab helmets and bats and then hats and gloves. Carter played well, he has an athletic touch that skipped my generation and went to him. At 5 and 6 these boys are fun to watch.
That was fun but not the exciting part.
Later that evening, I took my daughter Keeley and her friends Bella and Kenzie to a “Hitting clinic.” The girls have been struggling at the plate and the number of Victories have been slim. Our coach, Dave Vanhoff, scheduled this clinic with Stephanie Clark at the Thunderbird Adventist Academy.
We were scheduled for 7:30 and AMAZINGLY we showed up at 7:15. What a cool place this is! We drove back through this sporting complex that appears to be part of a church and found the batting cages. There were young men just crushing the ball in the cages.
We needed at least 6 girls for the clinic and 11 showed. I guess most everyone that could come, saw the value in this evening. I don’t think they could imagine what was to come. Or was it just me???? I don’t know, but I felt it was an amazing experience.
Stephanie got all the girls around her, in a circle, with her in the center and worked on their batting stances. It was amazing to watch this gal swing the bat. She is a full on athlete and demonstrated the most perfect swing I have ever seen. She broke the stance and then the swing down with such simplistic clarity, the girls all caught on quickly.
With so many in the group, she sent the girls to 9 stations.
I did the short pitch. I was in a batting cage with a screen in front of me and slow pitching to the girls. Oh, here is where the back gave out. I would pitch an over sized bucket of balls to the girls, maybe 20 or 30. Pitching wasn’t the problem, it was picking up all the balls afterward. Finally, about 4 or 5 girls into it, I decided I would gather and the hitter would have to fill the bucket. It may have been a bit too late, but oh well. We were having so much fun.
As the evening went on, the girls got better. I went through 10 of the 11, and the last 4 were just killing the ball. This was due to the other exercises and progression of learning. One station was a machine pitch batting cage. Another was a coach throwing a golf ball sized woofer ball in the air, and the girls fallowing through to hit it.
The other 6 stations were basically all different “T” exercises, except the first. The first station is hard to describe, but basically had a low bar and high bar so you had to swing correctly to put the bat in the grove. If you swung incorrectly the batter hit the bars. As Stephanie put it, well she related things to a house. Funny for me being a Realtor. But, you know how home plate looks like the outline of a house. She used that for foot placement and in this case to describe why she taught them to swing the way she did. When one swings like I do, a big round house lunge. She called that “going around the block” to get to the ball at home plate. When the hitter followed through with the swing she was teaching, she called that “crossing the street.” So, what is faster to the ball at home plate? Is it going around the block or crossing the street. When the hitter followed through with this swing, she was crossing the street and when she crossed the street she got to home plate without hitting the bars.
This brings me to the routine Stephanie taught the girls. It was how she broke it all down that just brought it together so well. First, she got the girls into their stance. Hard to describe, but legs wide, knees bent, more weight to the back foot, elbow up, barrel of bat at the proper angle and it was beautiful. What was awesome was how the girls followed and caught on.
Next was the batting motion. “Stance” she would yell out, and the girls responded. “Load” was next, and that was the crouching and pulling their bat in place. “Toe Touch” was bringing that front foot a little further forward. Then this was cool, “Elbow, knob, Barrel and Snap.”
Wholly mackerel, what are you doing? What an awesome simple way to put it all together. “Elbow” was the motion of bringing that front elbow towards the ball or even pitcher. “knob” was the next motion which is pushing the their hands down and pushing the end of the bat right to where the ball will be. Next was “barrel” and I would guess to describe that as after the full extension of the hands to push the knob towards the ball, one begins to bring the barrel around. Then “snap” and when done correctly, the wrists and snapping with the full weight of the batter. This causes the ball to fly off the bat.
Wow Stephanie, I know I missed half and did not bring justice to your teaching. But I wanted to recreate the best I could to put it deeper in my memory!
I CAN’T WAIT FOR THEIR GAME TONIGHT…I WANT TO SEE THE BALL FLY OFF THE BATS!
GO DUST DEVILS!
480-652-2004