About the Site:
This site’s full purpose is to demonstrate and share proper mechanics through thoughts, comments, and videos, etc. with the goal of helping the sport of fastpitch softball continue to evolve. I created this site to host and showcase videos as a quick, personal coaching resource for young aspiring pitchers. A resource of great examples that can be easily sorted by tags depending on what you are looking for (i.e., if you click on the ‘southpaws‘ tag in a pitching post, you will quickly sort and see all examples of pitchers that throw left-handed to compare. I share the videos online because it might be as useful to another as it is to me. My goal is to share examples of good, safe mechanics.
Every female athlete that you see in the videos on this site or that I talk about in its content are hand-picked by me as I believe they have excellent mechanics! I imagine these athletes have worked very hard over many, many years through many, many hours of practice to perfect their unique styles. I try to get as many pitcher and hitter examples as I can, but there’s only so much time in the day, so all can’t be represented here.
To get the maximum experience of this website and to fully understand and appreciate the great mechanics of the athletes on it I strongly recommend that you use an HTML5 browser like Microsoft Edge (you can actually slow down the videos to under half of the frame rate to study the pitcher’s and hitter’s mechanics by right-clicking on the video with Edge) or Google Chrome, which fully supports HTML5 and all the experience that this website is designed to fulfill. Side note: I’d imagine Firefox will someday catch up, but for now – even though it is my favorite browser – I don’t recommend using it to view this site.
I do realize the video quality on this site isn’t always the greatest, BUT it does get the job done.
My Approach:
I developed this site to share what I’ve learned about fastpitch softball over the years. I started playing team sports as a little league baseball pitcher, which helped me quickly understand what it takes to play under pressure and execute strategies successfully while in the circle. I have been coaching PONY, PIAA, NSA, ASA, and USSSA (to name a few) fastpitch softball, especially pitching and hitting, ever since the early 2000s. I’ve spent many Fall and Summer weekends traveling to highly competitive college showcase tournaments across our great nation. Pitch calling and coaching at the 18u National Gold-level, help me develop focused drills and training. Traveling to Junior-Olympic tournaments as far South as Orlando, FL, and as far West as Huntington Beach, CA, has given me unparalleled softball experience and expertise. I started pitching for softball in local church leagues after the Navy and was one of the youngest players in the circle across my entire region. Just out of the military at the time, I had high attention-to-detail and was eager to learn. Shortly after I started coaching in 2008, I really started to appreciate and admire the sport of fastpitch softball from a strategic standpoint. With that said, I then dove in and learned everything I could and have ever since (evident by my Tivo, which is full of college and NPF softball games from the past couple years, leaving little extra room – even for the Flyers!). I currently give softball hitting lessons, catching lessons, and fastpitch softball pitching lessons. Since I know both sides of the ‘softball coin’ very well, teaching hitting and pitching, I bring expertise and mental approach at a level that players will likely never get exposure to through playing alone.
Having traveled to over 25 of the top college and university softball camps in the country over the past several years has given me an understanding and knowledge of college recruiting processes and proper college coach communications. I’ve obtained a unique knowledge-set to know when Division I is right and when Division III is right. The family’s goals and financial aspects and the college’s job placement ranking relative to the player’s career goals are just part of it. Division I is not always the right answer, folks.
I’ve met, spoke with, and studied people whom I feel are the best pitching and hitting coaches around… in the western part of the United States, Doug Finch (Jennie Finch’s dad, of course) and then the best pitching coach in the eastern part of the United States, Tom Besser. Not to mention, I also enjoy the excellent philosophies of Bill Hillhouse, a men’s fastpitch great. I’ve attended clinics and seminars by exceptional pitchers like Mike White, a men’s fastpitch legend, and now head coach for the University of Texas softball team. Wherein the clinic, he demonstrated how he throws his rise ball with mechanics that don’t change at all from his other pitches until the point of release, which makes it extremely hard for the batter or 3rd base coach to pick what pitch is coming. I’ve studied excellent pitchers in action like Cat Osterman with her exceptional spin, getting to meet her while she played for the USSSA pride (visiting Lancaster, PA). Lacy Waldrop of FSU, breaking down how she throws her amazing drop ball and phenomenal changeup through many hours of studying high-resolution, slow-motion video and then putting it into practice.
With respect to coaching, I’ve derived my style by combining and filtering the many excellent coaching philosophies from clinics, interviews, videos, discussions, etc. including Sue Enquist, formerly of UCLA; Patty Gasso, University of Oklahoma; and Mike Candrea, University of Arizona to name a few. Splitting focus across a wide range of experiences including: college recruiting; pitch calling; the psychology of sports and mental approach; to dynamic stretching and safe mechanics; to deep dives into softball spin rates, spin efficiencies, Gyro degrees, and pitching physics of late-break that allows a pitch to hop that 2 1/4 inches over a barrel at a specific velocity, has given me the tools I need to be a highly successful coach and instructor at any level.
On the hitting side, I’ve learned the techniques from the well known Sue Enquist, formerly of UCLA. And I’ve been lucky enough to have met and studied video and techniques extensively derived from who I believe to be the best (female) hitter in fastpitch softball Of All Time: Crystal Bustos.
Terms of Use:
Downloading videos from this website is strictly prohibited. Reproduction of any of the content on this website is not authorized. I have disabled the ability to download videos from this website, and any attempts to do so will be logged. If you want to use this website as a coaching tool, I highly recommend it, but again… use the content on the site in the context of where it was intended but do not take from it as it would likely violate copyrights and these terms of use.
This site uses video recorded from games for the sole purpose of education. These videos are therefor protected under Fair Use of the US Copyright Act.