Complacency is the enemy of progress

After throwing last week, I decided to focus a little more on weight training, yoga, and swimming.  I think that swimmming is tremendous exercise and very low impact.  It is also wonderful for developing the upper body in a balanced way, and therefore very good for pitchers. 

So my wonderful athletes have been going out there and doing amazing things.  They have been accomplishing so much, not just in terms of statistics, but also in terms of being team leaders and role models.  Most great athletes don't realize how much younger girls model themselves after them, and that is both a tremendous responsibility and wonderful opportunity.  Younger girls will try to emulate your mechanics, your attitude, and essentially everything about you.  They will follow you in the paper and keep track of your statistics.  I remember that when I was first learning to pitch, my dad took me to see Danielle Henderson, and I wanted to be just like her.  I also wanted desperately to pitch against her, since I am psychotic like that and always wanting to play against the best.  When she first went off to college and came home to help at clinics, I drilled her with questions about what she liked most about pitching at school, how she felt she increased her speed the most, what pitches she learned, etc.  To this day it amazes me that this great Olympic athlete was not only an inspiration to me growing as a pitcher, but she is also a very, very dear friend.   How lucky am I?

So this brings us to a more challenging note.  When you are dominating, and striking girls out left and right, how do you keep from becoming complacent?  I have some wonderful athletes who are doing great in their respective seasons, but whom I feel are not really utilizing all of their assets.  This is not an easy thing to address, but I think that the most effective way to address it is to try and set up a means of objective evaluation.  For example, the wonderfully talented Catherine Havens has been having her mom film her games for years.  She then takes some time the day after the game to evaluate the things that she did well, and the things that she could improve upon.  I think that this keeps her incredibly strong and consistent throughout her season.  It is almost like you are competing against yourself in a way, constantly striving to be better.  I joke that I need to take a lesson from Catherine because she has become so incredible at emphasizing the good and adjusting the bad.  This is a girl who will be a tremendous asset to whatever college is lucky enough to have her.  For other girls who don't want to film their games, I ask them to do a quick evaluation of each pitch on the bus ride home.  Also, note how your speed was and how it has been in general.  We want our accomplishments to be meaningful and wonderful, but we don't want to rest on our laurels.   When we all compete from forty-three feet over the summer, we want to be prepared for the better competition.  When we showcase, we want to really give the coaches something to look at.  Challenge yourself gently and you will find you are often up to the challenge.  If you become complacent, you will find yourself in for a rude awakening when the true competitors come to call.