Catch Clinic

The Terrasvogels are trying to raise money for the European Cup tournament in Venice in August. One way they are doing so is by organizing and instructing softball clinics. This Monday myself and 6 of my teammates instructed a day clinic at the Catch club in Leidshendam. We started with a group of b-ballers (baseball) and pupillen (young softball girls). This group of 12 was between the ages of 7 and 10. They were adorable. We played a tag game with them and then went over throwing, some fielding of ground balls and hitting. I was helping the kids by speaking a mixture of english, dutch and gestures. German was also going through my head, but I was able to come up with the dutch equivalent before I actually said anything to them.
This is a picture of Solange, Meike, Marije and I trying to tell the little softball girls how to field a ground ball. It was tough trying to get them to get their butts down as you can see from the picture.


I also threw a few pitches to Solange once their session was over and one of the kids said, "Wow, I definitely can't hit that." It was very cute.

We continued the next hour and a half session with the juniors softball players. These teenage girls were very different from the previous group. They knew more about the game, but they had many things wrong with their fundamentals. We again helped them with their throwing, fielding and hitting. Dana and I were in charge of the hitting station which included mostly tee hitting. After the teenagers we moved onto adults. Dana and I started with 6 men's fastpitch players. They were really eager to learn and hear about what we had to say. There was quite a bit of explanation and instruction on the differences between a fast compact softball swing vs a more upper-cut baseball swing. Then there was a lot of joking around mixed in which made everyone laugh and smile most of the time they were at our station. After the men were the women. These ladies were all somehow connected to the club either by being a volunteer, wife/girlfriend of another player in the club or a mother of one of the young players we instructed earlier that evening. Most of these women had started softball within the year. Dana and I did quite a bit of talking about proper hitting mechanics and then about playing and how to stay positive, etc. They told us that they had a cheer where they said something about "let's play the game and then have some wine." These ladies seemed like they had a great time whether they were winning or not, but they were also really excited about learning more and hopefully applying that new knowledge.

The clinic was a lot of fun. The time passed by quickly and each person I talked to was nice and had something cute or funny to say. Here is a pick of the Terrasvogels girls that were the trainers for the day. The Catch participants had a great time and we even heard talk about how many of them wanted us to come and do a clinic again. The team needs more money for the big tournament, so maybe we will return. The website for the team is www.terrasvogels-softball.com if you are interested in staying up to date with the games and team.