Come-on! You can’t blame a freshman for trying to avoid tensing-up in that situation. It didn’t work out but trying to stay mentally loose is a legitimate strategy that doesn’t deserve criticism.
Definition of insanity…
She's pitched in enough games to know when to focus. Playing Rutgers is different than ranked teams or the pressure situations of PGF championship games.
Was there any aggressive effort to find a veteran pitcher during offseason by transfer, if she was injured or having surgery? Hard to understand what the thinking/planning was.
I attended a women's sports psychology seminar a few years ago. The sports psychologists, who were women, received a question about like yours. "Why are women athletes always smiling or laughing in tight situations?" They answered, "that's how female athletes typically respond to pressure, a reaction most male athletes can't identify with and find very strange."
I have always wondered about the psychological aspect of any sport in how much of a role it plays in the results of a game/match etc. etc. etc.
This is Ritter's second season being the Gophers head coach.
If you recall, during the summer and at the start of the fall season, Minnesota had four capable pitchers - Pease, Dueck, Hostettler, and Leavitt. Near the end of fall two of them left. Who was in the portal at that time that would have helped fill the staff?
I don't know who was in the portals, if anyone. Yet if Pease was injured & having surgery & if Dueck had such chronically bad knees that she soon would give up softball (as reported on this site), those seem like some pretty darned clear warning signs that the pitching staff could become dangerously thin, as it now seems to be. 12 BB & 2 HBP in what? 3 innings?
I doubt anybody was in the transfer portal any good at at that time that wanted to come to Minnesota.
I can understand how that can be, but does that make it best or not? That is the crux. Do the best women athletes respond like that? Honest question.
Fair question. In my experience, many of the best play their best when they are loose and relaxed, and in order to stay that way they smile and laugh with teammates. Of course there are others who are more serious and intense, a good example of that are the players for Oklahoma. One is not better than the other but simply a reflection of the player.
Speaking of pitching coach, is there any coach's status report on Pease? Her last two outings have been very poor. There has to be a cause.
My guess is that they think people like us will be more angry if they lose (which was already proven possible on Friday).
she dove for a ball in left that came out of her glove. but she did come back in to run later in the game.
hostettler is struggling mightily at division 3 augsburg. i don’t think she would have been a big help at this point. not to say she couldn’t figure it out at some point, but her stats right now are not good.
Uh, yeah. It’s all right there for us to see the problem. 37 walks in 21 innings tells all - major command problems.
This series was a huge opportunity to see who can help you going forward in conference play.
They do it all the time though. So I guess .... sorry I got nothing.
frustratingAnd my daughter is being recruited right now and we've decided that she isn't going somewhere that she doesn't play regularly.
