Control the Controllables

This is the second part of our 2 part article on the State Championship success of Lutheran High School softball team from Indianapolis. To get you quickly caught up, this was a team made up mainly of freshmen that had experienced a poor season (by team standards) the year before and was looking to try and turn it all around this season.

The players got together and came up with their own Team Focus of for the season: "Focus on Ourselves", and "Control the Controllables". In order to take these slogans beyond just talking about them or posting them up on a board at the beginning of the year the players actually got together and came up with some strategies on how to do this every practice and every game.

After speaking with Heather and Amanda, (SS and 2B of the team), here are the keys they said really helped make a huge difference to them as players, and as a team:

• They only talked about their record against themselves and not their record against their opponents. For instance, we're 4-0 against ourselves instead of we're 4-0.
• They quit going over scouting reports as all it did was get the players worried. The coaches went over them and then positioned the defense or called the pitches accordingly.
• From the very first practice they focused on what THEY were doing and never mentioned anything about their opponents. (Note - the players really liked how this sounded since it was positive and not so negative).
• They each focused on controlling their own attitude whenever making a mistake, and they helped each other as teammates with their ability to rebound their attitude following a mistake.
• In practice they competed against each other by having infielders vs. outfielders vs. pitchers/catchers in bunting, or hitting or throwing practice.
• In games they played Tribe against Tribe:
  • The Infielders vs. outfielders - whichever group let the least number of balls get through during a game won, what they won was up to them.
  • The Hitters; the 1,2,3 hitters vs the 4,5,6 vs the 7,8,9 and they worked to see who could do the most of each of these during a game: get on base, drive in a run with runners in scoring position, successfully bunt runners over and, have 7 plus pitch at-bats!
  • The Pitchers and the catchers were in a group and they were against the infielders and outfielders to see if they could (combined) allow fewer baserunners (via walks or hit batters - hits don't count) than the infield or outfielders let balls through.
  • The bench players combined to both pick off the other teams signals and made sure all of their team's baserunners touched every base. They got a point for everyone of these they noticed. The bench players were then in the competition against the infielders/outfielders/pitchers/catchers to see which "tribe within the team" could win their challenge in order to help the "team" win the game!

"Controllables" are things like effort, focus, concentration, hustle, positioning, pitch selection, rebound ability attitude, and teammate support. All of these things ARE controllable if you work on them either as an individual or as a team. When an individual controls these factors they become good. When a team controls these factors, then like the Lutheran HS softball team - they become Champions!

For more information, examples, exercises and drills for ways to control your players emotions, check out: A Coaches Guide to Creating Team Chemistry. And, you-ll also want to check out The Ultimate Softball Practice Guide for lots of ways to make your practice much more competitive.