Eighteen games into the MIAA schedule we are now 17-1, with ten games left to play. Half of our four game series against Hope College was postponed due to Friday's weather, and those games will be made up on May 10th. Though I was hoping we would play last Friday, now we will be able to use six different starting pitchers on that last week (Friday, Saturday, Tuesday) and thus have some more of our pitchers prepared for the Regional Tournament.
Though we still can't count our chickens before they hatch and we can't take a Regional appearance for granted, our practice of believing in ourselves gives us the opportunity to visualize the regionals already. Our closest competitor in the loss column is Kalamazoo College at 9-7, and the next best team in the win column is Calvin College at 12-8. We play our Kalamazoo series in two weeks, and we have already played Calvin.
Early in the season, or actually in the pre-season, I had the pitchers use visualization while we practiced inside. For the returning players, I told them to envision being on the mound at Marietta College's field. That is where the Mideast Regional tournament was last year and again next month that will be the site. All of the players who played last season in that tournament are able to visualize themselves being successful on Marietta's field, and that can only help us when we get there.
Again though, we still have to take care of business in our last ten games. Yesterday we swept Hope, throwing another shutout in game #1, which gives our pitching staff eight shutouts in our 18 conference games, and seven shutouts in our last twelve games. That is an indicator that we are continuing to improve, but we have to keep reminding our guys that no matter how well we have been playing, there are still mistakes made that we can learn from and thus make ourselves a better team.
The luxury that a team has when it is playing well is that in trying to improve on weaknesses, or mistakes, it is easier to pick out those mistakes after games because there aren't as many of them as in a poorly played game. In providing feedback after a bad game, there are often so many mistakes to try to hash out and then some of them can unfortunately be overlooked. After well played games, we can look at the mistakes we made and spend some time in dialogue as well as in practice to try to take care of those situ
Though we still can't count our chickens before they hatch and we can't take a Regional appearance for granted, our practice of believing in ourselves gives us the opportunity to visualize the regionals already. Our closest competitor in the loss column is Kalamazoo College at 9-7, and the next best team in the win column is Calvin College at 12-8. We play our Kalamazoo series in two weeks, and we have already played Calvin.
Early in the season, or actually in the pre-season, I had the pitchers use visualization while we practiced inside. For the returning players, I told them to envision being on the mound at Marietta College's field. That is where the Mideast Regional tournament was last year and again next month that will be the site. All of the players who played last season in that tournament are able to visualize themselves being successful on Marietta's field, and that can only help us when we get there.
Again though, we still have to take care of business in our last ten games. Yesterday we swept Hope, throwing another shutout in game #1, which gives our pitching staff eight shutouts in our 18 conference games, and seven shutouts in our last twelve games. That is an indicator that we are continuing to improve, but we have to keep reminding our guys that no matter how well we have been playing, there are still mistakes made that we can learn from and thus make ourselves a better team.
The luxury that a team has when it is playing well is that in trying to improve on weaknesses, or mistakes, it is easier to pick out those mistakes after games because there aren't as many of them as in a poorly played game. In providing feedback after a bad game, there are often so many mistakes to try to hash out and then some of them can unfortunately be overlooked. After well played games, we can look at the mistakes we made and spend some time in dialogue as well as in practice to try to take care of those situ