Unskilled Girls on Coed Team

[Space_cadet]

When I joined my sister in laws coed team. They played with 8 girls and 6 guys in a league where you have to have 2 girls play outfield. They only won 2 games that season. I helped clean house, kept the girls that were good and made the others "subs". Funny enough those girls knew others that were good. The next season we were 11-3. Lost twice to the same team (they had girls that could easily hit over 300.....yes 300) and our last game (it was a bs game. if we won we took second, if we lost we took second)

11-3 record was worth making some feeling hurt.

 

[Dan411]

I prefer to put the not so skilled girls at C and 2nd. Putting them in RF is asking for trouble because the good hitters will go that way. At least at 2nd they don't have to throw far and there's more fielders around to cover. Out in RF she's out on an island, unless your RC is a stud.

Good point. It's damage control really. Think about it this way, ball gets past the girl at 2nd base, it's a single or double at best. Ball gets past the girl in RF, doubles, triples, inside the park hr's all day.

 

[CrazyDude117]

y'all are making some great points. I'm going to have to work all of this into this season.

 

[CougarHunter1B]

I don't know how you guys do the coed game. tried it a few years back for a season or two and had to step away. Just found it to be frustrating, noncompetitive and boring.

 

[Space_cadet]

You have to look at it like this. Unless you are being paid to play, there isn't a reason to take softball serious. Men's leagues are fun for the competition, but it gets ruined by try yards that whine and whine and whine when there is a bad call, or the pop out. Coed is great for wanting to play softball just for fun. Laugh at the ones who take coed seriously.

 

[fuzzy2651]

I have my fun Summer coed league, my fun but competitive Fall ball league, and I play men's during the Summer. It's fun playing with my wife, and she's pretty good, but everyone laughs because we're always arguing. Coed is frustrating at times, and every year I feel like I'm replacing half the team. As much as I want to tell my buddy "Hey man, your wife/girlfriend sucks balls at softball", sometimes it's tough to find that 5th girl, so you have to take what you can get. I just enjoy playing the game

 

[2TransAms]

In coed it's the girls that make or break you. You have to recruit some new ones when possible and eventually you'll end up with better players. If the girls you have are spouses of the guys then you're gonna have to put in a lot of work as stated above. GL

Damn, all that work just to keep a bunch of girls who play terribly anyway from quitting? Guess it depends on your attitude. If you want a winning coed team, you can't afford to have more than 1, 2 girls tops who are "projects", otherwise I say it's not worth the frustration. If seeing a few players bring down the rest of the team with countless strike outs and blooper reel errors is just "part of the experience" and you can still have fun, then by all means go for it. That would drive me up the wall, personally.

Well, it's kind of like a church team. Some guys you just can't cut. And in coed, you can't just cut all the wives/girlfriends who suck.

 

[TrainWreck209]

P = personality
Also wives get a multiplier of 10
Girlfriends - x5
That girl you're banging - x2
That girl you're trying to bang - x20

Anything to the left of the line... cut

 

[4xtra]

We are a relatively new coed team (this will be our third season). Our rules require we have a 5x5 team (5 guys, 5 gals) and we have three girls that do not have much, if any, experience playing. We have tried helping them and moving them to different positions, but that doesn't seem to work. They want to play, and we need them to play, but they struggle during practice and games. Does anyone have any pointers to help with getting the girls to not be afraid of the ball, or drills that seem to work better than others? Any help would be appreciated!

3??
thats a bit rough.
I play on a co-ed team as well and I would recommend
Catcher
RCF
2nd base
have your RF come off the line about 50 feet and come in 50 ft from the fence (assuming that is a 300ft fence).

The vast majority of hits to RF are almost ALWAYS off the line and have 1B tighten the line so if a shot goes to the RF corner, the ball will have quite a bit of air on it to give RF time to chase the ball down.

you also may have to stagger them in the batting order because if you put them all at the bottom, you will stall late in the game when you have runners in scoring position.

I asked to be put me on the bottom of the order because that is when you always have runners on bases and it is easier for someone with no power to hit into a double play (or even a triple play).

I have seen many games in which you have to count on batters 6-7-8 late in the game so you will have to put them at
2-6-8 and have your power guys at
3-4-7-9.

Most importantly is that you got to get them to practice as much as possible

 

[CrazyDude117]

I have my fun Summer coed league, my fun but competitive Fall ball league, and I play men's during the Summer. It's fun playing with my wife, and she's pretty good, but everyone laughs because we're always arguing. Coed is frustrating at times, and every year I feel like I'm replacing half the team. As much as I want to tell my buddy "Hey man, your wife/girlfriend sucks balls at softball", sometimes it's tough to find that 5th girl, so you have to take what you can get. I just enjoy playing the game

I couldn't have said it better myself! This is our third season and I have replaced about half of the roster each season.

 

[CrazyDude117]

3??
thats a bit rough.
I play on a co-ed team as well and I would recommend
Catcher
RCF
2nd base
have your RF come off the line about 50 feet and come in 50 ft from the fence (assuming that is a 300ft fence).

The vast majority of hits to RF are almost ALWAYS off the line and have 1B tighten the line so if a shot goes to to the RF corner, the ball will have quite a bit of air on it to give RF time to chase the ball down.

you also may have to stagger them in the batting order because if you put them all at the bottom, you will stall late in the game when you have runners in scoring position.

I asked to be put me on the bottom of the order because that is when you always have runners on bases and it is easier for someone with no power to hit into a double play (or even a triple play).

I have seen many games in which you have to count on batters 6-7-8 late in the game so you will have to put them at
2-6-8 and have your power guys at
3-4-7-9.

Most importantly is that you got to get them to practice as much as possible

It kills me when I try to get everyone to practice. I know we do this for fun and we all have jobs and lives outside of softball, but I can't stand it when I hear from my teammates, "we need practice bad!". Then when practice rolls around, everyone seems to have things that they can't possibly get out of to come to practice!

 

[4xtra]

It kills me when I try to get everyone to practice. I know we do this for fun and we all have jobs and lives outside of softball, but I can't stand it when I hear from my teammates, "we need practice bad!". Then when practice rolls around, everyone seems to have things that they can't possibly get out of to come to practice!

One way I fond out to get people more motivated to practice is set a day like Saturday morning to practice and PICK THEM UP yourself.
If you go get them, they will be more pressured to practice.
Sounds a bit aggressive but it works.

 

[CrazyDude117]

One way I fond out to get people more motivated to practice is set a day like Saturday morning to practice and PICK THEM UP yourself.
If you go get them, they will be more pressured to practice.
Sounds a bit aggressive but it works.

The only thing with that, we have some folks that leave 30 minutes from the field in opposite directions. I'd spend 2 hours just driving to individual houses. I may start that though. LOL

 

[Awesome Softball Drills]

We are a relatively new coed team (this will be our third season). Our rules require we have a 5x5 team (5 guys, 5 gals) and we have three girls that do not have much, if any, experience playing. We have tried helping them and moving them to different positions, but that doesn't seem to work. They want to play, and we need them to play, but they struggle during practice and games. Does anyone have any pointers to help with getting the girls to not be afraid of the ball, or drills that seem to work better than others? Any help would be appreciated!

Hi there, if you think that their main issue is afraid of the balls, then the issue it is definitely with their state of mind. You got to train up their mindset by letting them feel that softball is actually REALLY FUN. This can be done by implementing simple yet fun drills for them to start up and build up their mindset and confidence~

After they get used to the style and feeling of it, step up the game/drill progressively. In this way, slowly but SURELY ^^

For detailed softball drills, I highly recommend you to check out our website (homepage) as it explains clearly with step by step explanation and I do not wish to spam this thread. You can reach there by clicking on our Avatar picture and there's our webpage link in it.

All the BEST ^^

 

[Rooster210]

It kills me when I try to get everyone to practice. I know we do this for fun and we all have jobs and lives outside of softball, but I can't stand it when I hear from my teammates, "we need practice bad!". Then when practice rolls around, everyone seems to have things that they can't possibly get out of to come to practice!

you'd be surprised what a small BBQ can do to encourage ppl to come out...if theyr'e a drinking crowd then there's your other key requirement

 

[Rooster210]

[QUOTE="Awesome Softball Drills, post: 18840269, member: 115554"

For detailed softball drills, I highly recommend you to check out our website (homepage) as it explains clearly with step by step explanation and I do not wish to spam this thread. You can reach there by clicking on our Avatar picture and there's our webpage link in it.

All the BEST ^^[/QUOTE]

im sure SBF wont mind you spamming or advertising as long as you become a sponsor might wanna inquire on that

 

[4xtra]

The only thing with that, we have some folks that leave 30 minutes from the field in opposite directions. I'd spend 2 hours just driving to individual houses. I may start that though. LOL

Have them meet at a central point at someones home and then roll from there.
We had to do this and it worked.
Yes, you are jumping thru alotta hoops but sometimes you have to

 

[jtboy85]

For the last month I've been playing on a CoEd team because simply I wanted to get into softball. There are several women on the team that can't play worth a lick. There's a lack of hustle in some women when fielding the ball or even baserunning it's irritating. I get that women want to play to simply get out of the house and do something fun however; man I get a headache quite a few times. This is not to say that not all women can't play softball because essentially there are lots of good ones out there they just don't play on this team haha. If a woman questions what to do on a certain play or acts like a "diva" then they have no reason to play and just sit on the sidelines.

 

[Kernsoftball]

My Coed team has 6 girls 6 guys and lets just say 5/6 dont really have great skills, if any. Now depending on how old your girls are it may be hard to get them to create or break bad habits. Our 1 capable girl is 3rd base, than we have them At RF, Left Center, 2nd and C. I play RC and cover From LC-RF its alot of ground to cover but if you got Seriously Capable Outfielders it doesnt hurt too bad. We are 4-5 on the season lost 1 girl to a Fly Ball smacking her between the Eyes, just be patient they will gradually get better but only in time. Sadly my team cant get a practice in Ever so we are using Game time to get better. Position wise if you have 3 fill in the Righ side 2nd, RF, and C

 

[tonyjohnson619]

We have to field 3, we play c 2nd 1st... the girl at 1st can catch a ball real well just not very mobile so she is perfect for 1st. The thing that I notice hurting coed teams the most is girls who can't run

 

[MaverickAH]

It's a shame that we don't have more women on the board as I'd be interested in their perspective on this subject.

Coed softball has become very popular around here. Most of it is on the social/rec level. It's also not the traditional 5/5 setup. It's more often a minimum 3/7 setup. Some leagues play with a coed line, some don't.

I would say to play in a league that commensurate with your team's overall skill level but that's not always possible. If you're lucky, you can find women who have fast pitch experience & good athletic ability. Unfortunately, that's not always possible & you will, more often than not, find yourself in a situation where you have to "develop" players. This requires time, patience, dedication & determination by all parties involved. No one becomes proficient overnight. It's a process. You also have to realize that different individuals are going to plateau at different levels. Hopefully you can develop them to a point where you can maximize their capabilities.

What you don't want to do is discourage them. Don't overrun them on plays. Allow them to make mistakes with no recrimination. Offer only positive reinforcement & try to set up 1 on 1 practice time with them. There's nothing like working to get better away from prying, critical eyes & then having it bear fruit at game time.