Hello Fastpitch Fans,
What a day!
A person from Poynette posted a description on Facebook today that perfectly covered today’s weather. She said it was just like a Snow Globe, first shaken up like a blizzard in there then no snow falling and sunny then the wind would whip up another blizzard.
I did get some fastpitch in today though. Did a pitching lesson with an up and coming Portage player. We were inside though.
Later this afternoon I worked on the Fastpitch Chronicle Coaches Honor Roll. There are actually two sources to view the Fastpitch Chronicle Coaches Honor Roll. You can find it on the Fastpitch Chronicle website here or you can view it on the wissports.net website. I updated the lists on the wissports.net site this afternoon as well as some cleaning up on the lists on my website. They should be much closer to correct. Keep in mind, however that several of the categories can be researched and proven by looking in the WIAA State Tournament programs over the years. The Career wins category, however is incomplete due to the fact that many coaches simply haven’t chosen to forward their totals.
The coaching career win totals are for varsity game wins only. We have a separate category for JV and Freshman level career wins. If you know of someone who ought to have their name on the list just forward that information to me. In the early days of fastpitch softball in Wisconsin most teams with a JV team played a few innings after the completion of the varsity game. Sometimes using players that actually played in the varsity game as well just so as to get some innings for the lower level players if there were not enough of them to fill out a lineup card. Wins in those games ought to be used for the JV/Frosh list only and not included in varsity wins. So, if you are sending in informaiton keep that in mind.
Also remember in the earliest days of WIAA softball a regulation season schedule consisted of just 12 games. It remained so for several years before getting bumped up to 14 games where it remained for several years then got bumped to 16 but those extra games could not be played on a day when there was school the day following the game. That meant they had to be on Friday or Saturday. Not many teams played on Saturday back then. The first few Poynette Fastpitch Jamboree events were played on a Friday afternoon. Eventually the regulation season limit got bumped up to 18 then to 20 but two of the 20 had to be multiple game days and get this. If your team was involved in a multiple game event and a team played one game then the event got rained out, it was determined that it was against WIAA policy to play the other games scheduled for that day somewhere else later in the season. That made running big events really tough to reschedule. Things went pretty well for a couple of years until an edict came down from above with the ruling I just typed.
Then a few years ago the softball coaches in the state were successful in getting a straight 26-game schedule adopted. So, in 2016 teams can play 14 more regular season games than girls back in the 70s and early 80s could. Just think about that for a moment and compare the two eras. Back in the day, there was a lot of practice time over many practice days. I just looked at our varsity schedule for this season here in Poynette. Compare what I found to what your team faces. Here is what Poynette’s schedule looks like. We have not played a game yet so we have had three weeks of practice minus two days off when that late March snow storm hit in Week 2 on Tuesday night and Wednesday. That means that we have had 13 practice days. Barring bad weather Week 4 will see us practice three times and play four games; Week 5 has us slated to play three games and practice twice; Week 6 includes 3 games and 3 practices; Week 7 has us playing five games and practicing on two days; Week 8 includes 7 games and two practices; Week 9 now includes just one game and four practices; Week 10 shows 3 games and 2 practices; Week 11 includes the final day of the regular season, that being May 23rd so that’s a practice day. Then the WIAA tournament begins. So in the regular season our program will have played 26 games and held 29 days of practice.
I would guess that there are teams that practice on open Saturdays and some even practice on Sundays so they may get more days of practice than we do.
Here are some more numbers for you tonight to think about.
Chequamegon Head Coach Ken Dischler has moved up on the Career Wins list to the 250 mark. Congratulations Ken. That 250th came in his Eagles win over Stratford last week.
When looking at the Fastpitch Coaches Honor Roll a person will see that there are 80 coaches who have qualified teams for the state tournament at least two times. Those 80 coaches total 366 state tournament berths. There are just 14 coaches in the history of the WIAA state tournament who have led their teams to more than one Final Four. Those 14 coaches have accumulated a total of 195 Final Four trips. There are 21 coaches whose teams have won two or more state championships and they total 58 state titles. There are 19 coaches whose teams have made it to the final four but lost the title game, thus state runnerup, for a total of 46 second place finishes among them.
River Valley senior pitcher Kylie Hoffman is off to a great start to the 2016 season. While most teams in the state have yet to play their first game, Hoffman is 2-0 with wins over Marshall and Sauk Prairie and she has been 2x4 at the plate in those games including a home run vs Marshall. She has walked just one and fanned 19 in 14 innings of work.
The Northwoods Jamboree featuring Gilman, Elk Mound, Stratford, Menasha, Baraboo and Poynette that was to be held in Poynette today was postponed and will be played April 9th with Thorp taking Baraboo’s spot. If there is a team looking to get one varsity game in that day in Poynette you can but it will be a 1:00 PM start. Contact Brian Phelps at Gilman High School to get more information.
There are a lot of games on the docket statewide in the coming weeks.
If you’d like to see more written and published about your favorite team, just tell the head coach of that team to submit game summaries to me in the form of a word document or even an email. Sending me a copy of a scorebook page or a gamechanger report isn’t going to get that team much coverage as I don’t have time to sort through about 200 games every day and write up articles. Honestly folks, getting much coverage these days within large daily newspapers is not easy. In the Madison area the major daily will cover about four or five games to some degree with one game getting top billing and that’s usually one of the Madison City schools or the Badger and sometimes the Capitol Conferences. The Fastpitch Chronicle offers all the space you want but requires that it get to me in a form whereby I can simply copy and paste. I understand some of the issues, no I understand all of the issues any coach in the state faces. However, if a player from a team that does not promote their team fails to get some good post season recognition who does that fall on? The smaller the school the tougher it is to garner that kind of recognition, just check those awards lists and see for yourself.
Hey, the weather is sure to break sooner than later. When it does it will be a Great Day for Fastptich!
Keep it Rising!
Bob
