Under 22 Games

On Sunday I coached my team in some Under 22 youth games. The Austrian Softball League has a few weekends in the summer that guarantee the youth players getting playing time. There is only one league in Austria, so it is sometimes hard to get the young or new players in the games, so these dates are for them. We played in Linz, which is an hour away and there were four teams playing. My team was made up of ten Pee Wees and two girls from the Stockerau Rag Dolls. We were officially called the Niederösterreich team. That is the state that both teams are from, Lower Austria. The unofficial name that the girls came up with was "Pee Dolls." It was really funny but kind of strange every time they cheered it.

The field at Linz has some funny little parts to it. There are no dugouts, just EZ Ups with white plastic chairs under them. They drew chalk lines for where we had to keep all of our bags and things in as a sort of boundary. Also, the backstop net is really small and there were a lot of balls that tipped off the catchers' gloves and went over the fence for a dead ball. And there are two spots of dirt on the field. The pitchers circle and the Right hander batting box plus a little in the catchers area. The rest is grass. You can see a little easier from these photos.



The games were fun. It was great weather to play in and most of the girls finished the day with red arms and faces. The coaches from the Austrian Junior National team were at the games to try to recruit some players for the team. It is strangely difficult for them to field a team. The players here start very late around 16 and then others are not dedicated enough to do extra practices, etc to be on the National team. Its also hard because there are only about 200 softball players in the entire country and then to find good ones under 19 who want to play is a very small group.

The games went well and we won 2 of 3 games. There were two girls playing for our team that just started playing a few months ago and they did fine. They are still lost most of the time, but they had some good bunts and hits which makes it fun. After the games, I asked one of the girls what she thought of the day. She said, "Everything is clear. I now understand everything." I just smiled. It was cute.



The coach for the Austrian Juniors team this year is one of the previous Juniors coaches from the Netherlands. I actually played with his daughter when I was playing in Holland in 2008. He was helping coach the team from Tirol. The team is made up of skinny little girls between 12 and 15. It was good for them to have someone who knows about softball actually giving them instruction and new drills, etc to do. My teammates and I thought that he was being a little bit harsh at times because he would start to yell at them a little bit when they messed up. However, they are still young girls and most of the time they just never knew how the correct way to run the bases, etc.

On Tuesday he came to our team to lead our practice. He apparently is doing a "tour" of the Austrian softball teams and leading their practices. My team was nice and attentive and worked hard with what he had us do. Some of the things he was going over he said were "the new thing they are teaching these days," but they are actually old school. It was a nice practice, but the highlight was all of the jokes we got out of it. He kept telling stories about when he coached in Russia, Netherlands or his "shop" in the back of his car containing softball goodies.