It looks as though the NCAA decision to reduce the fall softball evaluation period to only four weekends, from the second Friday in October through the first Sunday in November, is a done deal. For those of you with younger players, you may not have even been aware of this pending action, had no idea of its impact, or even care about NCAA actions.

But for those parents with high school-aged daughters that are interested in playing softball in college, you are most likely aware of and disappointed in this policy change. To recap, the current NCAA bylaws permit college coaches to have contact with and evaluate potential college recruits from August 1 through the day prior to Thanksgiving. Under this current system, several softball programs have developed very popular “exposure” tournaments that draw hundreds of college coaches who can evaluate and contact potential players.

The new change will reduce this recruitment period to four weekends. There will be many ramifications of this action, and not all impacts can currently be determined. But it is clear that the number of these “exposure” tournaments will be greatly reduced, most likely they will become much larger and there will be more events held on the available weekends, creating a conflict for teams and college coaches.

The reduction in the number of these events will impact the players’ opportunities to be seen by college coaches. Not only due to the fact that there are fewer events, but also due to the fact that these events may not be able to accommodate all of the teams that wish to participate. The hosts for these events have limited resources for fields so they can only accommodate a certain number of teams for their events.

For years, college coaches have complained about the size of some of these tournaments, making it difficult to see the number of players that they might have liked to see. This bylaw change will most likely make these events even larger. Also, impacting the coaches’ ability to evaluate players is the fact that with more than one event taking place per weekend, most likely assistant coaches would be sent to another event to watch players. This creates less of an opportunity for players to be seen.

A tentative schedule of “exposure” events is currently circulating, and based on what I’ve seen, so far, there will be a minimum of three and a maximum of five such events on each of the four weekends. Which of these events will the coaches attend? Which will be the preferred events for teams? With the limitations on colleges on how many coaches they send out to recruit, they will not be able to be represented at even ten of the scheduled events.

There are going to be many losers as a result of this change. Some colleges will lose out on recruiting opportunities, many players will lose out on opportunities to be seen, and many traditional and successful tournament hosts will lose the opportunity to continue their tradition. And in trying to look at both sides of this situation, I see very few winners.

COACHING QUIZ
I have developed the following coaching quiz and provided the correct answers below. Don’t look ahead at the answers, just take the test and then see how high your coaching IQ is.

1.) You have only the plate umpire officiating your game. With a runner on first, your pitcher delivers the pitch and the plate umpire calls “Dead ball” and calls your runner out for leaving too soon. Since it appears to you that she did not leave early, you should:
A.) Call time out and calmly discuss the call with the umpire. B.) Go to the home plate umpire and ask if he can ask for help. C.) Tell the umpire that it makes perfect sense that he could make such a call since it was obvious that he hasn’t been watching the strike zone.
2.) You just noticed that you have burnt your DP who was your number two pitcher, and your starter is beginning to get rocked in an elimination game that you are winning by two runs. You should:
A.) Warm up your number three pitcher. B.) Start stalling in hopes that time will run out. C.) Have your starting DP change uniform tops with her twin sister.
3.) It’s the bottom of the seventh inning. You are down by one run but the bases are loaded with two outs. Your number nine batter is up and you have no pinch hitters available. You should:
A.) Call for a squeeze play. B.) Pray for a miracle. C.) Start jumping up and down waving your arms and yelling to distract the pitcher.
4.) Your shortstop (and leadoff hitter) slides into home plate and crashes into the catcher scoring the go ahead run in the top of the seventh inning. She hurts her ankle and you carry her back to the dugout. It looks like she might have broken her ankle. You should:
A.) Move your second base person to shortstop and put your daughter at second base. B.) Tape up the ankle really, really tight and send your shortstop out to play the bottom of the seventh. C.) Throw your hands up in the air and forfeit the game.

ANSWERS: There are no right answers; I just wanted to write something funny.

FOUL TIPS
As this issue reaches you, the high school season is about to end. To the parents of seniors that will not be moving on to play in college, please give your daughter a big hug and tell her how proud you are of her. If your daughter is moving on, do the same thing * * * * In addition to the end of the high school season, the national qualifying journey is now beginning for the younger age divisions. Best of luck to everyone. Play hard, play fair, and have fun * * * * As always, you can contact me at floydeunslip@yahoo.com* * * * and so the ball rolls.