Recruiting Camps: Good, Bad or Indifferent Part 2

As a follow-up to last week’s post on “Recruiting Camps:  Good, Bad or Indifferent?”
I received two excellent questions, the answers to which may be relevant to many of our followers.

The first question refers to a multi-talented player who pitches for her high school and travel teams, but only pitches at around 60 mph.  In addition, she is an outstanding  hitter and fielder.  The father of this athlete is concerned that showcasing as a pitcher might not impress college coaches sufficiently to get them to stick around long enough to see her other considerable abilities.

What follows is an answer which should apply to any prospect under similar circumstances.

Any well rounded, multi- tooled athlete should be attractive to a wide variety of college coaches.  Please keep in mind that most of us only get an opportunity to see college pitchers who play for teams that have made it to either a super-regional or the college world series on ESPN.  Sixty miles per hour with great location, the ability to change speeds as well as a variety of movement pitches will turn just about any college coach’s head.  Yes, the top schools are looking for girls who pitch between 65 and 70+mph but the average of all NCAA pitchers is probably right around 60 mph.

This however is not the overriding factor in whether you should be showcasing as a pitcher or as a hitter/position player.  The question you need to ask yourself, is how much do you love being in the eight foot circle?  The next question is what level of college ball do you want to play (if any) and do you currently have the skills that match that level?  Let’s assume that it is extremely important for you to play for a division 1 , SEC, PAC 10, or Big East college.  Which of your talents is most likely to get you there?  There are also many competitive division 2 and 3 college programs where ball players can enjoy their softball careers as well as a more expansive college life.

In this particular case, outstanding hitting ability was mentioned by the questioner.  Having been through the recruiting process at a very high level, I can tell you for certain that almost every college coach will say, “Find me a girl who can hit and I will find a place for her on the team.”  By the same token, many of those same coaches will tell you that their pitchers can hit and play other positions when not in the circle.  But in reality, this is often not the case.

Where you are from, and the level of competition your travel team faces also is very important in evaluating the overall talent  you possess, at any of your positions, relative to the top travel players in the country.  As I stated in my original post, having a hitter/fielder showcase her talents in a recruiting camp is a very good idea for the reasons I mentioned in my post.  Whenever possible pitchers should draw interested college coaches to the fence to watch them in game situations rather than at a recruiting camp.

I hope this has been helpful to many of you.  Next week I will answer a question related to “playing up.”