Spring League Begins

So it’s that time of year that some summer sports are beginning to practice. Like baseball and softball for example. Well I play softball and we began practice and along with those practices we also began a thing called spring league, were teams from around that area get teams together and play like scrimmages, they don’t really count for anything there just like pre-season games. It’s tiring sometimes and still cold, because sometimes it’s not quite warm enough to play outside, but we still have to. Sometimes I’m not the biggest fan of spring league for the fact that we have practice like 3 or 4 times a week and not every player that we think is going to be there is there.
Not everyone plays though so the ones that don’t go out for spring league don’t have to be there, but the ones that do are the ones that go to the practices. I mean I sometimes like playing spring league because it gets me back into the groove of things to come for summer when are actually playing for real. I like the fact that I get to practice getting my swing for batting better and hopefully with that little extra practice I will improve my batting average and get more hits this summer than I did last year. I mean I got plenty of hits, but definitely think that I could have gotten more. It also helps me get back into the groove of pitching against hitters again. Because all winter I had pitching indoors and didn’t really have batters that I could pitch to, to see where my pitches would go when there was a batter standing in the box.
The spring league is also a good way to see what the upcoming freshman (8th graders) are going to play like, and what kind of skills that they have, and how they are going to handle the more fast pace game. Since they are used to like 14 and under year olds pitching to them, because compared to that kind of league everything is faster paced and they have to be ready for that. Even if they play on like JV or fresh/soph. those teams are a little bit more competitive than what they are used to, and I think that if they participate in the spring league than they can get a little taste of what is to come when it comes to high school softball.
There is one downside to having eighth graders going out for spring league. It is the fact that they don’t really know what to expect when it comes to what kind of softball high school level is. And I mean I should give them a break because they don’t know what to expect, but sometimes it frustrates me because instead of practicing and getting better they would rather mess around in practice and talk, and not practice on getting better with like batting or something. They would rather mess around with a drill and not make it serious and get it right, or do it well the first time, and I mean I’m not saying that some days that’s what I’m but I know what the drills are like and I know without asking sometimes what I’m doing wrong or what I need to correct. I mean sometimes I do mess around but usually I’m concentrated on what I’m doing at the same time so I get it right and that I don’t have to fix it later, I can fix it now. But there learning about what it’s going to be like and hopefully they can get everything out of it.