Statesmen Overcome Bad Coaching: Webster 9, Lutheran South 4

Despite an egregiously terrible job by the head coach, talent won out and the Statesmen blunted the Lutheran South lances to win a long, confusing game, 9-4.

My goal was for this to be a non-starter start and give all the girls a chance to bat and play the field, especially those who have seen limited playing time. Well, that, at least, was successful, even if no one, including the opposing coach, umpires, and, embarrassingly, me, knew exactly who was batting and playing where. My heart was in the right place, but my brain and attention to detail were wildly out of kilter.

I had experimented with several lineups (not the players as much as where they would hit) the night before and failed to make the change on the side by side lineup cards I printed out that afternoon, so the umpires had a completely different batting order than the opposing coach (and me, although since I “knew” what I [finally] wanted the order to be and had it on the scorekeeping side of my card, I didn’t notice the, well, there’s a military term to describe it, but this is a family blog, so let’s just generously call it a mistake – proving it’s not what you don’t know that hurts, but what you think you know and are wrong about.)Of course, the opposing coach also didn’t notice until the second time through the lineup (nor did the umpires until he called it to their attention), but he was legitimately upset.

I think he thought we were trying to pull a fast one, not realizing that 6-7 starters were either on the bench or unavailable. As those players filtered in to the tight 4-4 contest, he finally recognized that our goals were honorable even if my implementation was flawed. He also apparently didn’t get the memo that this was a JV game and world peace did not hang in the balance. In any case, Josie Krueger entered in relief of Megan Hayes, who did a nice job, and restored order in the world more effectively than U.N. Peacekeepers, striking out 8 of the last 9 batters.

The box score below is correct statistically, but if you don’t like the batting order you see, make up your own and you’ll have just as good a chance of it being as correct as the one I gave the opposing coach and the one we actually used. In fact, this is what it was ’spozed to look like, but did not. In any case, the girls did a great job of just being ready to bat whenever we figured out it was their turn (in a couple cases only 3-4 batters after they had just batted). It was sloppy, careless and inexcusable and I apologized to the other coach, the umpires, but most importantly to the girls. I’ll do better tomorrow when we play Lindbergh at home. In any case, we improved our record to 9-1 and got some pictures for the blog and, hopefully, the photobooks.