minihaha5

I beg to differ with this statementl. The question should be, regardless of team, who would you want on the mound to give your team the best chance of winning. Not having seen all of the pitchers in the state, I would hesitate to decide who is the best. I have not seen any dominating pitchers (rarely come along), but I have seen some very good pitchers this year. I think all mentioned are good pitchers but to come up with some creative manipulations of stats and game results to determine who is best does all of these players a disservice.

They both pitched 5 years. Still an outstanding accomplishment for her

I have had daughters involved with softball since 1994 and have watched umpires all over the country, and the idea of bias is way overblown. The biggest problem is the parents trying to call balls and strikes from the stands. Sure umpires have some variation on their strike zone, sure some are weaker than others, but bias is highly unlikely. My daughters and their teammates were to adapt to the umpire, not whine about the strike zone.

Call me a cynic, but I have not seen many college coaches at high school games and that is in the middle of the college season, so who is going to come?

I agree with Fury 96. They don't have to play, but if it is in his players' best interest to play so be it. This comes up every year in every age group and it always sorts itself out. If a team has to get a berth only because other teams are not playing then they probably do not deserve the berth anyway. Keep winning and you can get the berth. Like any other tournament, win early and often.

Not the Goodpasture of old and playing at Camden. I would give a slight edge to Camden

Every year somebody says Mrnoitall is John Conditt. Gets kind of old!

Saw them last night. Good team and the pitcher was the real deal.

Interesting summary of the state of softball at a lot of schools. Metro schools are not competitive and won't be. Lack of talent since softball is not something you just pick up and do well in without practice no matter how athletic you are. FRA had a good run in the past when they had a core of travel ball players and good pitching, but those days are behind them. Maybe they can get better if some students enroll there who play summer ball, but who can tell. Ensworth the same boat. Somebody told me a long time ago that schools like FRA, HH, and now Ensworth won't be competitive in softball because there are too few pick up trucks in the parking lot. I thought that was a novel way of putting it. The schools that do well are in counties that have strong youth programs. I know that is not a profound statement, but I have observed a decline in the quality of the youth programs. Maybe more girls are gravitating to other sports.

I don't think that the move was to protect the pitcher. I believe it was made to be consistent with other organizations. As far as protecting the pitcher, my daughter says if you don't want a hard hit ball coming back at you, don't throw it over the middle of the plate!

Way to early to tell, all of the teams listed are good, but time will tell. There has been a lot of activity in Middle TN since the exposure tournament in Murfreesboro with teams folding and players shuffling teams. Be interesting to see what comes of it all.

I would like to hear from pitching coaches on this. My daughter's ( she is in high school) pitching coach believes that it is a bad move. I am not sure if it is a national mandate for middle school as it is for high school. That 3 feet is a big difference for developing pitchers to adjust to.

Ridiculous. You are talking about 12, 13, 14 year old girls. There is already a shortage of decent middle school pitchers, now TSSAA wants to shrink the pool more. Why not put the ball on a tee and let them hit it after 4 balls!! 43 feet is great for movement pitchers but for the developing pitcher it is one more obstacle to overcome.

What if a high school head coach is umpiring a game at a travel ball tournament and some of his high school players are competing? That situation arose this past weekend.

The increasing costs of private school limits the number of potential athletes that can attend the school and the modifier rules affect the competitive ability of such schools. That is why more and more are going DII. Aas my oldest daughter's( she attended private school) coach told me, they didn't compete for students with other private schools, they had to compete with Williamson County. As for facilities, Forrest, Riverdale, Ravenwood and many others do fine and have facilities to compete with the privates. Has to do with the interest in the programs and the parent's participation. For full disclosure my children do attend public school.