Setting
The Braintree Policeman Executive Officer's softball team consists of thirteen nine- and ten-year old girls that live in Braintree, Massachusetts. The main coach is a college female senior from Boston University and is supervised by a father of one of the girls on the team, hereby named Coach J and Coach P respectively. This will be the second year Coach J has coached this team, but she has been assisting since high school. Coach P has coached this team previously, and coaches other sports in Braintree. Many of the girls on the team have played with each other before but others either are new to the sport or played on other teams in previous years.
Due to the recent inclement weather, this is only the second practice the team has had. Coach J canceled the first two practices of the season, and I ended up observing a practice designed for the pitchers on the team. Coach J decided that there should be two practices a week: one for all players that works on offensive and defensive parts of the game and a second solely for girls that will be pitching. She thinks an extra practice for the pitchers will help build their confidence when going on the mound and generally provide them more opportunity to hone their skills. Luckily, for the team, the first game does not occur until towards the end of April, so that the earlier planned practices served only to get the team comfortable with each other.
The location of each practice is at a playing field in Braintree, but the rain forced Coach J to reorganize the meeting location. High school sports teams would be using the gymnasium at the local high school due to the rain, but their practices usually end at five. Therefore, Coach J informed the parents of all...
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...ons, I think there could be a way to adapt that part of the practice to fit what she wanted better. With four girls, she could have only one girl pitch at a time, taking the other two girls and making one a batter and the other an observer. This way the girl pitching can have someone at the mound making the situation closer to a game experience, and the other girl can learn something from watching another pitch throw the ball. I hope that this situation could eliminate some of the tediousness of the practice and allow each pitcher a more effective way in improving her skills.
Ultimately, Coach J is an effective facilitator that gets along with the players, parents and other coach. From this experience, I plan to observe my own interactions with all individuals involved in the coaching process, and try to get along with each person as well as Coach J does.
Coaching is an integral part of helping achieve one’s maximum abilities. Dr. Gawande (2013) explains that, “Coaches are not teachers, but they teach. They’re not your boss—in professional tennis, golf, and skating, the athlete hires and fires the coach—but they can be bossy” (p. 3). It is difficult to say what is the exact function of a coach, however, they help bring forth another point of view different from our own and they also help bring about the right mindset in order to subdue a weakness.
Though the practices performed within softball literacy do not immediately seem as if they should be considered a literacy practice, according to two of the six propositions about the nature of literacy, it is. Not only does it involve the physical performance from a play, but also includes formal writings, new rules and regulations, and offer different rules in different countries. I think softball should be counted as a literacy practice because it appeals to Barton and Hamilton’s propositions and includes artifacts that make it a community and artifacts that provide the players with essential people skills.
Many women have taken up the positions of engineers, factory workers and many more jobs normally occupied by men. Many women that wanted to help with the war effort had worked, bought war bonds, donated clothing and foods and anything else needed to help and support our troops. Some women now had the opportuinty to play baseball and still help promote help for the war. However the idea of women playing baseball and acting like men was completely absurd during that day and age. That year of attendance of The AAGPBL approached one million, with the players completely defined the image of a respectable lady, the girls played ball with a new baseball of fast pitching, stolen bases and injuries, epically skin abrasions from sliding to bases in short skirts. Though the female ball players were skilled and athletic, their required uniform were one piece dresses and had to wear makeup at all times so that it was a reminder to the spectators that these were indeed women playing in the field( ). No player was allowed to drink, smoke, date, cut their hair short or be seen in public with slacks or shorts. Every player were required to join and had to endure “charm schools” where they were obligated to learn ladylike behavior. Though there were many limitations and requirements for the female players this new form of
Both the boys school's treat the importance of the game of softball very differently. Mr. Galanter, the coach for Reuven's team, treats the game like war, and in turn his team does too. "No holes...what kind of solid defense is that? Close in. A battleship could go in between you and Malter..." (Potok, 14)
Before we told our daughters that they could be anyone, or anything they wanted to be, we told them that they could only be what was acceptable for women to be, and that they could only do things that were considered "ladylike." It was at this time, when the nation was frenzied with the business of war, that the women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League decided that they could do and be whatever it was that they chose. These women broke free of the limitations that their family and society had set for them, and publicly broke into what had been an exclusively male sport up until that time.
In softball, it is common for the crowd to be loud and upbeat. The spectator’s goal is to motivate and cheer on the favorite team. Softball is known for their chants and pre-game warmups. The environment of baseball is the opposite. If you find yourself at a baseball game, you will notice it is more calm and relaxed. The pitcher’s goal is to stay calm, collected, and to handle adversity. Baseball players are known to have a superstition about the game. Never will a professional baseball player be caught stepping on foul lines, or messing with any kind of routine that has caused success in the past, where in softball they don’t see it as a big deal. The speed of the game between the two is very noticeable. In a standard softball game, the length of the innings is shorter than what people would expect in
From the moment I was born I was destined to become a softball player. My dad is from the Dominican Republic. In his country baseball is the national sport. People expect Dominicans to play baseball. Therefore, it didn’t come to a surprise when my dad began to influence me to play softball at a young age. My dad played a significant role in developing my interest in softball which allowed me to become skillful in catching and throwing. From the moment I was born I began my journey to becoming skillful at this. Skills I acquired at a young age would later encourage the development of my proficiency in catching and throwing. Throughout this paper I will tell the story of how I progressed to each period on the “Mountain of Motor Development.” This “mountain” is a metaphor of the sequence I followed that helped me build up my skills. There are 6 Periods in the mountain: the Reflexive Period, Preadapted Period, Fundamental
For this Women of Diversity Group Project, my group chose to write about female pioneers in sport. Within that category I chose female pioneers of softball. During this paper I will discuss the history of the sport and female participation in the sport. I will also give some statistics and make comparisons between females and males involved in softball and baseball.
Spring is full of transformations and changes. Flowers blossom, the temperature rises, and those with allergies begin a long journey of pain and agony. The start of spring also brings with it the beginning of baseball and softball. By carefully analyzing two teams representative of each sport at the University of Arizona a sociological analysis based on the similarities and differences between the sports was conducted. Despite the relative similarities between the two sports a number of differences were also identified showing that both sports are interconnected with cultural aspects and elements that may not immediately be observed on the surface.
I encountered a “bump in the road” at a young age. I began playing softball at age six when Kylie, my elementary school friend, came to show and tell with her first place T-ball trophy. At the time, I had only played soccer, but the thought of swinging a bat as hard as I could and having people in the stands cheer for me, inspired me to ask my mother to register me for the local recreational league. Before I knew it, I was lacing up last year’s soccer cleats and stepping up to bat in my first coach-pitch softball game. My father, being the coach, stood on the mound and lobbed in the fattest meatball every hitter dreams of. With the ding of my second-hand garage sale bat, the ball sailed over the shortstop. Some may have called it beginner's luck, but I called it a sign.
Over the past few years I have volunteered as an usher at my church, as a food vender at the PGA Honda Classic, helping my best friends mom in her classroom, working a food stand at a local softball tournament, as an assistant coach to a 10U travel softball team, and as a camp counselor at a softball camp. Personally, I think that being an assistant coach for a 10U travel softball team helped shape me a lot. Helping coach the younger travel team felt great to give back to the community, and it made me think of where my own softball journey began. I absolutely loved coaching the younger girls because I am now much more experienced in the game and can help them a lot more and get them stronger so that they can excel more in the game. I want them to love the sport just as much as I did when I was younger so that their love for the game will grow even more just as mine did. Coaching these girls was one of the best things I could’ve ever done. Talking to the girls about when I started softball, what my favorite part of the game is, going to college to play the game I love, how much they love the game now, and how they’ll all be in my shoes in a matter of years had me grinning from ear to ear. I loved every minute of it, I loved hitting to the girls, working on their fielding, pushing them to be their best, making sure they put 110% effort into everything they did, and
Wallace, Robert. “Should Girls Play on Boys’ teams?” Creators.com A Syndicate Of Talent. N.P. 2011. Web. 8 Dec. 2013.
During the following week, the boys began to take drastic measures. By Monday morning recess, the boys had decided not to let the girls field at softball anymore. They picked on the girls whenever the chance presented itself.
Coaching, however challenging, is a great way to influence the lives of others while also building their character. For as long as there have been sports, there have been people teaching the sport to the players and making them better at it. Coaches must have certain qualities in order to obtain success. One must also look at a coach’s motivation for his job, his passion for what he does, his methods for coaching, and how he became a coach in order to fully understand him. There are many questions someone may want to ask a coach about his profession if they are interested in coaching.
In today’s society being a coach can be extremely complicated especially compared to earlier years. Coaching requires not only many technical and personal skills but also has to include positive psychology that will affect all athletes regardless of gender, age, and race. After reading various articles this leads me to the question, what is a coach? How do coaches differ from one another? In addition are we forgetting the importance of not only coaching but the sports psychology aspect of coaching overall? Regardless of what you may have read or heard I believe not only do all coaches have their own coaching style but every coaching technique and style is different. Coaching styles and positive psychology are two techniques that can provide