Success

So another season ended yesterday, but it's never really just another season.  It is a journey that includes so much more than competing against opponents on the field.  A season is like an adventure with a group of guys who are all in it for like reasons, to have each other's backs and to succeed in reaching common goals.

This season and this team were similar to past seasons and past teams, only different.  As is the case every year, this particular group of guys have only one year together.  Eight of them graduate and move on, and next year some new players will join the core group of returning players.  This isn't anything new; it takes place every year for every team in America.

This season was filled with success.  Some people didn't expect this team to be as good as it was, due to the graduation of several of the league's top players last year.  Personally, I expected nothing but success and expected to compete for the NCAA DIII National Championship.  The fact that we were eliminated from the Mideast Regional Tournament on Friday means that we will not win the National Championship, but by no means was the season a failure.

We can measure success in many different ways.  This was a team which was among the DIII statistical leaders in several categories, such as batting average, slugging percentage, scoring, triples, earned run average, pitchers' walks per game, and strikeout to walk ratio.  But those statistics are not what made the season a success.

Several individual team members set or broke team and MIAA Conference records as well, in hitting and pitching categories, and five guys were named to the Mideast All Region teams.  But that really isn't what made this team successful.

This year's Adrian College Baseball Team won 37 games, setting a school record and giving this senior class the most wins of any class in Adrian Baseball history.  It also won it's fourth straight MIAA regular season championship and became the first ever MIAA Conference Tournament Champions.  Successful?  Yes, but not due to on the field performance.

The great success of this squad has more to do with a group of college student-athletes who cared about the team more than they cared about themselves.  They were friends and mentors, teachers and students, companions and warriors.  They put the team ahead of themselves and nurtured positive relationships with each other.  They trusted each other and knew that when they stepped on the field for practices and games they were going to help each other improve as teammates and as players.

Most importantly, they gave everything they had for each other, and expected nothing in return.  By expecting nothing in return, they were rewarded with a lifetime of brotherhood and memories.  For that reason, they were so very successful.  I congratulate them and love them!!

On to the next task

Yesterday we won the championship in the first MIAA Baseball Tournament, earning a automatic berth into the NCAA DIII Regionals next week.  In past seasons we earned the privilege to compete in the regionals by winning our regular season championship.  Though we did win the regular season title again, we had to prove it all over again on the field this week by winning the four-team, double elimination conference tournament.  We completed the job without a loss, thanks to some fantastic execution by our hitters, defensive players, and pitchers.

Congratulations to our eight seniors, who were MIAA Champions all four years here at Adrian College!!  They are the first group to do so since some Alma College players did it back in the 1950s!!

Our players know that the season does not end here; we've still got some work to do!  We advanced to the DIII College World Series in 2008, but that was a year before these seniors put on their AC uniforms.  We now must go win a Regional Tournament, most likely in Marietta, Ohio, to advance to the CWS again.

Obviously, the regional tournament will have other championship teams trying to achieve the same goal that our team has.  One of those teams is Marietta College, the defending national champions who just won their conference tournament today.  In 2011 we played them in a doubleheader in Florida and split the two games with them, losing 3-1 and winning 2-0.

What do we have to do to continue our success in the post-season?  The answer is that we need to keep executing in the batters box, on the mound, and with our gloves.  Our plan as a pitching staff has been the same all season: throw first pitch strikes, get leadoff batters out, throw to the bottom of the strike zone, and successfully manage damage control.  The pitchers know that this team's offense is going to put some runs on the scoreboard, and that always takes some pressure off of the defense and pitching.

Our team is among the DIII national leaders in some statistical categories as we prepare for the regionals.  Among those categories are slugging percentage, batting average, runs per game, triples, earned run average, walks allowed per game, and strikeout to walk ratio.  With some of those categories, the keys to success have so much to do with taking care of the little things and focusing on the task at hand.  Once we take care of the task at hand, we can focus on the next one.  One pitch at a time, on batter at a time, one inning at a time, and one game at a time.

We call that Business as Usual.

Before I finish this, I want to give a proud shout out to my Alma Mater and former team, the Saints of Siena Heights University, who won the WHAC Tournament and advanced to the semi-finals in the opening round of the NAIA National Tournament.  Congrats to Coach John Kolasinski, his staff and all the players.  In addition, continued good luck to our former AC coaches Luke Harrigan and Xander Younce, who are currently in their third game of the WVIAC Tournament.

The privilege of coaching

I am using this blog post to remind my brothers and sisters out there who volunteer to coach youth teams how important it is to put the kids first and foremost every time you step on the field, court, or diamond.  Later this week I will update the blog about the past couple weekends of the Adrian College Baseball Bulldogs.  I spend a little time working with kids and coaches in our local communities. Below is a reminder I recently sent to many of or great community volunteer coaches:

Since many teams are now beginning to play games and compete in tournaments, especially in the pre-high school age groups, I thought it might be an appropriate time to remind coaches what a great privilege it is to have the opportunity to be a leader of young athletes.

 

The position of coach rates right up there with parents, teachers, and clergy members.  We sometimes need to be reminded that with this privilege comes responsibility that is bigger than the idea of winning games.  As a matter of fact, if we win games but are not outstanding role models then we haven’t really won at all.

As we head onto the softball and baseball fields each day it would be a good idea to take a silent moment to have a some self-reflection and remember that the children we work with are the main priorities.  Each individual athlete is more important than the outcome of any game, tournament, or season.  If we let one kid down, or fail to live up to the words we have spoken to them, or contribute to damaging their self image and self worth in any way, any championships won will be shallow and pointless.

Each of us has a life outside of coaching.  We have families at home and professional responsibilities at work.  We often have stressful circumstances at home and work that can result in heavy burdens as we go from one place to the next and put on our coaching hats in place of the other hats we wear away from coaching.  Though it can sometimes be difficult to leave the thoughts of those stressors behind, the clay-like psyches of the kids we work with are so important to take care of.

I first started coaching in the late 1970s and haven’t stopped.  I have been guilty at times of carrying my own frazzled self into the coaching arena and acted unreasonably toward the athletes and toward the sport itself.  That was an unfair and selfish thing for me to do.  As we gain in experience and maturity it usually becomes easier to understand that our young athletes are always the number one priority in our coaching situations.  As the saying goes, kids don't care how much you know until they know how much you care!

Take care of yourself, check your thoughts, clear your mind, and love the kids you coach!!

The climb to the peak

Now that we have the first two MIAA series under our belts, we have opportunities to continue to evaluate how we are pitching and try to tweak some things so that we can gradually make improvements during the season.  One goal that we occasionally talk about is that the season isn’t a sprint, and that we want to get better every day and thus be playing our best baseball in May when we get nearer to the post-season.

This year will be a first for us in the MIAA, as there will be a four team, double elimination tournament after the regular season ends.  For us at Adrian, having won the regular season championship the last few years and thus qualifying for the NCAA DIII Regionals, we now have to prove our mettle in the MIAA Tournament if we want to assure ourselves a spot in the Regionals.  I like the idea of a conference tournament, as there will now be very meaningful games (with post-season implications) played for everyone throughout the entire conference schedule.

With the idea that we will likely play again against our conference opponents in the MIAA Tournament, becoming familiar with their strengths and weaknesses is a given, but even more important than understanding the tendencies of our opponents is to get better at the things we do.

Some of the things we have discussed as a pitching staff in the last couple of weeks are things we have made improvements in.  As a staff in general, we are doing a better job of throwing to the bottom of the strike zone.  It is still important to make progress in that area, especially when there are runners on base. A location mistake up in the strike zone can lead to a run or two allowed, and in a conference that so far in 2012 has been littered with low scoring games, the fewer times we make mistakes up in the strike zone the better chance we have of putting zeros on the scoreboard for our opponents.

One of the points of emphasis for the next couple of weeks now are to continue to be aggressive in the strike zone early in the count.  We have only walked nine batters in our first eight league games, and one reason for that is that we have done a pretty good job of getting ahead of hitters early in the count.  When we get ahead in the count, it becomes easier to force the hitters to expand the hitting zone and make them hit pitchers’ pitches, thus hopefully hitting more balls away from the barrel of the bat.

In addition, we are trying to do a better job of attacking the opponent’s running game, not only by utilizing our pickoffs, but also by working on having quicker feet, more accurate throws, and disrupting the timing of the good, aggressive base runners.

After 18 games, we are nearly half way through our regular season schedule and over a quarter of the way through our conference schedule.  That means that we are really not even half way through with our climb to becoming as good as we can become in 2012.  Every season has high points and low points, and as we develop as a team we can improve the definition of what playing our best really means.  We haven’t yet come close to reaching our peak, but we are on our way there.

A game of inches

For many years we have heard that baseball (as well as other sports) is a game of inches.  So many parts of the game make that saying as true as true can be.  In just one game or series of games you will see many instances where in inch one way or another could have changed the outcome of a batter's turn at bat, or caused either an extension or end of an inning, and of course an inch or two can mean the difference in scoring one or even several runs.

A full count pitch with the bases loaded could appear to be an inch outside to an umpire and cause a walk and thus a run being scored, or it might be called a strike and end an at-bat or a possible big inning.  A fly ball to the fence could be just out of the reach of a defensive player and result in a big homerun, or a slightly higher fence may keep the ball in the park and thus prevent more runs from being scored.

A pitcher might miss his targeted spot by an inch or two and the result could be an rbi hit rather than a relatively easy out.  A softly hit ball may fall barely out of the reach of a fielder and allow a batter to reach base safely, and in the next at-bat the batter might hit a ball squarely with great velocity only to have it go directly to a player's glove for an out.

An inch here or there can make a batted ball be fair or foul, a pitched ball be a strike or ball, a long fly ball either a homerun or an out.

Regardless of the enormous importance of a pitcher's pinpoint control or the batter's ability to place a bunt in a specific location, perhaps the most important inches involved in a baseball game are the few inches between a player's ears.  A player can have all the ability in the world, but if he doesn't use his brain to make wise decisions and to respond to adverse circumstances in a positive, controlled manner he is going to have some difficulty getting consistently good results.

More than just the ability to make good decisions and respond to adversity positively, a baseball player must be able to approach each pitch, each play, each inning and each game with the confidence and belief that he is prepared to succeed.  Belief in one's self, which is based on positive thinking, is a pre-requisite to achieving success.  

There are many ways to develop a strong belief that one is going to help his team achieve goals.  Some people do a better job at practicing having positive self-talk than others do, some are better at visualizing successful execution, some are better than others at forgetting a previous play that had a negative result.  No matter how a player decides to create positive thoughts for himself, the more often he practices doing that the easier it will be to have great results in competitive situations, which can be stressful for athletes.

Ultimately, an athlete on a baseball field can develop the ability to improve the thoughts and thinking patterns and habits that he has during a game.  The more he chooses to check his thoughts, practice making positive statements and thoughts about himself, and visualize success, then the more he is going to help his team win games and be successful.  

Choosing to make the few inches between the ears the most important inches in a baseball game can often make the physical game of inches on the field seem like extra teammate.

Southern trip recap, moving forward

We've been back from our southern trip to Georgia and Florida for almost a week, and we've had a pretty good week of practice in preparation for next weekend's trip to northern Kentucky for a couple more games before we commence with the rest of our season here in Michigan.  Today we began our northern JV schedule with two games and we have two more JV doubleheaders the next two days.  Coach Nate Sarkissian's squad played well and won a couple games today against Muskegon Community College by scores of 3-2 and 10-0.

I have been wanting to update the blog all week to quickly recap our trip, but it seemed that every night I sat down and it wasn't long before I was looking at the backs of my eyelids.  Regardless, after a day outside in the cold wind, being in the dugout for fourteen innings has renewed the hunger for competing against other teams again.

There were a few interesting things that happened in Georgia and Florida.  We defeated the nation's #4 team (Christopher Newport University) as well as the #15 team (Piedmont College) on back to back days.  They are now ranked #3 and #10, respectively.  In Florida, we played a couple crazy games against Capital University in Port Charlotte.  On Thursday we won in eleven innings by scoring ten runs in the 11th.  Then on Friday Capital turned the tables on us and had a ten run inning of their own in coming from behind and beating us 13-10 for our only loss of the trip.

In last Saturday's game, Jason Fryman started the game by throwing nine pitches in the first inning, all strikes, and struck out all three batters.  Not a fair ball was hit in the inning.  I can't say that I recall that happening before in any of the 1200 or so college games that I have coached.

On Friday in Port Charlotte, we were able to see Michigan and Ohio State play each other and also see a few innings of the Northwestern vs. Western Michigan game.  The Buckeyes won the game 8-4.  In talking to our pitching staff, I was glad that they noticed a couple things about the DI games.  One of the things that we talk about multiple times on a daily basis is for our pitchers to try to throw their pitches on a downhill plane.  Some of them do a pretty good job of it, but some don't get on top of the ball as consistently as we would like them to.  For them to be able to visually notice the DI pitchers throwing downhill consistently was a good thing, and that served as one of our main pitching themes this week during practices.

Our players have done a pretty nice job so far, but we really do have considerable room for improvement.  We improved in the national rankings, but that doesn't mean a whole lot to me at this point in the season.  It will mean something around Memorial Day weekend if we can continue to become a better team each day and week in the next couple of months.  So far, we are doing a fair job in trying to achieve some of our pitching staff statistical goals, but we still need to get better at throwing first pitch strikes and getting leadoff batters out.  And perhaps most importantly, we must improve on taking care of damage control.

As for the trip, I'm glad I won't have to spend twenty straight hours on a bus again for a while.  I must be getting old!

Efficiency at its best

After game two of the 2012 season, we have won both of our games and are feeling pretty good this morning as we wake up and prepare for game number three.  After coming from behind to win our opener against Blackburn College in a game that we didn't play very well in, yesterday's victory against the #4 ranked team in DIII gave us an opportunity to see and feel what it is like to successfully compete against top teams.
On Sunday we had some struggles with all aspects of the game--- potching, hitting, defense and baserunning.  We fell behind 4-0 in the second inning.  To the credit of our players, nobody pressed any panic buttons and we came back to win the game 8-7.

As far as piching is concerned, we learned first hand that it isn't easy to execute pitches to close out a long inning. We threw over twenty pitches in each of our first two innings, and the difficulty of pitching well and maintaining a proper and positive demeanor when some bad luck occurs was apparent to me, especially in the second inning.

After two quick outs, Blackburn hit a bloop single, then a base hit that traveled fifty feet and then a bunt single.  A bases loaded walk resulted in a run, and some negative thinking ultimately led to two more walks before we went to the bullpen to get out of the inning.

Two senior pitchers finished the game and our offense scored plenty of runs to start the season on the right track.

Yesterday against #4 Christopher Newport University, senior Jason Fryman found himself in a pitcher's duel.  Though he hit CNU's leadoff batter, he cruised through the first three innings without allowing another baserunner.  We gave up a run after they hit two doubles in the fourth, both of which I still feel were the result of poor pitch selection by the pitching coach, whoever that clown is!!
Ultimately, Jason was so efficient and allowed only one infield hit the rest of the game and had no walks, throwing only 98 pitches in nine innings.
Last night Jason told me that on the night before, he kept visualizing the execution of all four of his pitches.  The result was really a sight to see, as almost every pitch he threw hit the spots that he was trying to hit.  He got ahead of hitters, got leadoff batters out, and competed like it was business as usual as our defense made every play and our offense scored three big runs in the 8th to secure a 3-1 victory.
This was an almost perfectly pitched game, but as good as it was, today is a new day and when we get to the park we're going to have to compete with another nationally ranked team on their home field.
We haven't made an infield error yet. With that kind of defense and a team of battlers, we're anticipating another successfully competed game today!