Coaching advice for small HS
I am moving from a 5A largish district where I’ve been an assistant varsity and head JV coach for 4 years to a 3A military base school where I will be an assistant varsity coach (no JV team).
The team I am moving to has a pretty good pitcher and a whole lot of inexperience. Was told that a large number of the girls had no prior experience before this last season.
Going into next season, what should we start working on to improve defensively. The pitcher had a great season, but (as you can imagine) the defense did not help her at all. Basically if she wasn’t striking girls out (which she did a lot) the other team were scoring runs. To add to this, due to it being a small school, most of these girls play other sports so we won’t get to softball until the season begins in January.
Basically, how do we keep the pitcher engaged and speed run these girls into at least being below average defensively instead of a mess?
Offensively, I am going to talk to the head coach about becoming a small ball team and creating chaos on the bases to compete. They strikeout a ton and that doesn’t help anyone.