![[IMAGE]](december_21_2006_files/image001.gif)
DECEMBER 21 2006
COMMITMENTS
Shamrocks 16U Dee Dee Fryer, Dominion HS class of 2008, verbally committed to University of Tennessee this past weekend.
Lauren McCaskey, 1st,3rd,OF, OC Batbusters, to Virginia
Wanda Malone - 2007 - Pitcher/Utility, Texas Glory 18-U (HALL) to LA Tech
Breanna Konz a Jr. at Roosevelt High School, Sioux Falls sd, Minnesota Irish, has given a verbal commitment to play for NDSU in Fargo ND.
Jennifer Lapicki, C/Ut, NJ Breakers, has signed with Virginia
Patti Garofolo Inf/Of NJ Outlaws committed to Caldwell College
Georgia Elite (Rogers-Edwards)
2007- Kari Chambers- Eastern
Michigan
2008-Maleah Cousineau-University of Wisconsin
2008-Eden Morris-Texas A&M
Rhode Island Thunder Gold
Jocelyn Abaray - Pitcher - to University of Vermont
Christina Pinkus - 1B - to Wagner
PITCHER NEEDED ASAP
Florida Tech (DII) is looking for a pitcher to come in next semester (January ‘07). Please contact Ellie O’Shei at eoshei@fit.edu. Scholarship money is available.
THE CAT GOES PRO
ROCKFORD, Ill. – The Rockford Thunder of National Pro Fastpitch (NPF) and General Manager Aaron M. Moore announced today that they have signed pitcher Catherine (Cat) Osterman to a contract for the 2007 season. Per team policy, terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Osterman, 23, most recently went 6-0 for Team USA at the World Championships in Beijing helping them win the gold and the No. 1 seed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The 6-2 lefty finished her eligibility at the University of Texas in June of 2006, finishing her career with a record of 135-23. She was 37-2 during her senior season. In addition to her success in college, Osterman has also won several gold medals, including an Olympic Gold in 2004 with Team USA.
“The signing of Cat is extremely exciting for our organization as we continue to prepare for our first season in Rockford,” said Moore. “Cat is easily one of the best, if not the best, pitchers in the world. Her ability as an athlete, coupled with the type of person she is, is only going to make Rockford and the whole NPF stronger.
“We think this signing will help make us the team to beat in 2007,” stated Moore. “The battery of Cat and Mackenzie (Vandergeest) is going to be special to watch this season.”
While at Texas, Osterman set 25 single-season or career pitching marks, including becoming the NCAA’s career strikeout leader with more than 2,200 in her career. During her outstanding career at Texas, Osterman also took home the Big 12 Pitcher of the Year award four times, the Honda Award for Softball (presented to the best college softball player) twice and the Big 12 Player of the Week award 25 times.
“I am very excited and very happy to be joining the Thunder,” exclaimed Osterman. “The team that is being put together is a good one and I am looking forward to being a part of it.
“This is also special for me because I will be close to some of my family,” said Osterman. “It’s going to be nice to be able to see some of my family in the stands for our home games in Rockford.”
Osterman was drafted No. 1 overall in last year’s NPF Senior Draft by the Connecticut Brakettes, but chose not to sign with the expansion team, making her officially a free agent on September 30.
DID YOU KNOW?
(gleaned from Sports Illustrated)
Terry Bradshaw, who won four Super Bowls, set the national schoolboy javelin record at 243’7” as a senior in Shreveport LA.
Tony Dungy, often sour-faced on the Colts sideline watching his sophomoric defense, knows something about excellence: at age 14, he was student president of his junior high; threw 23 touchdown passes over three seasons, was his school’s high scorer in basketball for three years; and was never defeated in low and high hurdles and long jump.
Tobacco spitting champ George Craft set the 1960 record with a spit of 19’6” into a crosswind. The record for 9-year old watermelon seed spitters is 18’8” – a guy from Pauls Valley OK could spit a seed from one side of Main Street to the other. When you grow up in PV, or Luling TX and Raleigh Miss, there’s not a lot to do.
UCLA Bruin Karen Andrews beat Texas A&M 2-1 in 1981, throwing 316 pitches in 29 innings. Andrew threw 7 no-hitters in her UCLA career.
My gut ached when I read in SI that Kenny Kirk set a sit-ups record – 31,111.
Nicole Ritchie. Appearing with Paris Hilton in 2003, uttered two expletives but was not fined by the FCC. T.O. was fined 35 large for spitting on an opponent.
Lionettes coach John Wilson has sons named Matthew, Mark and Luke
NIXON AND THE (SLOSHED?) KING
December 21, 1970, Elvis Presley met with the President. Presley had requested the meeting, and hoped to be named a Federal agent in the war on drugs. Critics contend the photos show that Elvis was “under the influence” of alcohol.
COACHING SOFTBALL IN CHINA
American
coach finds himself at home in Beijing
By Vicki Michaelis,
USA TODAY
BEIJING —
Michael Bastian's career path has been one of an itinerant softball coach, but
never did he imagine it would lead to his life of the last 12 months as head
coach of China's national team.
Communication with his players was limited to stilted translations and body
language. Conversation with his friends and family in the USA took place only
through infrequent phone calls and e-mails.
Home was a room in a rundown dormitory in Beijing, where pipes cut off an inch
from the ceiling passed as shower heads. Meals were often an unrecognizable
array of choices.
"The most bizarre thing I've eaten? To be honest with you, I don't know some of
the things I've eaten," says the California native, who is 44, unmarried and
lives in Reno.
Yet Bastian couldn't be more upbeat about this opportunity. If the Chinese
Softball Association extends his contract, which expires at the end of this
month, he could be leading the home team in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
"If I make it and I get to coach in the Olympic Games, it would be the pinnacle,
the apex of all the coaching dreams I've had," he says.
Bastian has worked as a head coach in the now-defunct Women's Professional
Softball League and at Division III Centenary College in Shreveport, La.
In recent years, he's conducted clinics for the International Softball
Federation in locales as varied as Guatemala, the Netherlands and Cameroon. In
March 2005, the ISF sent him to Kunming, China. He had gone to China once
before, in 2003, as a U.S. junior national team coach at the world
championships.
When he arrived for the clinic, which he believed was for players from all over
China, he soon realized most were already on the national team.
Chinese officials invited him back in the summer of 2005 as a consultant. He now
believes they were testing to see if he was a good fit for the job.
Bastian is not the team's first foreign coach — Canadian Shan McDonald coached
China in the 2004 Athens Olympics — and he is not the first American to serve as
head coach of a Chinese national team. Dallas Mavericks assistant Del Harris
coached China's men's basketball team in the 2004 Games.
But McDonald and Harris spent just a few months with their teams before the
Games. Bastian already has put in a year of long practice days and off days
searching for Western-style restaurants and American movies.
"I've known him for 18 years," says Paul Moore, an assistant coach for Bastian
at Centenary, "and him doing this was never in my wildest dreams."
Says Bastian's sister, Michele Limeberger, who has sent him care packages filled
with Pop-Tarts, candy bars and Hostess cupcakes: "This is kind of crazy.
Growing the sport
This is Bastian's shot at coaching on the game's biggest stage, an opportunity
seemingly out of his reach in the USA, where Mike Candrea is firmly established
as the national team coach.
This is also Bastian's chance to help ensure softball's Olympic future. Earlier
this year, the International Olympic Committee voted softball off the program
for 2012. Hopes for reinstatement in 2016 rest largely on proving the sport is
thriving outside the USA.
"He's got a challenge there from his own standpoint of doing well and from our
sport's standpoint," International Softball Federation President Don Porter
says, "because if China is successful, I think that will help our sport
overall."
China is gaining clout in the Olympic realm, and a medal in 2008 for its
softball team would help bring that muscle to the sport's fight.
"Softball is not very popular (in China), and fewer and fewer people will play
if we can't succeed," pitcher Lu Wei says through a translator.
China won silver in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics but has finished fourth in every
major international competition since.
Bastian was hired to hone the team's technical skills and improve pitching,
Chinese officials told reporters before last summer's world championships in
Beijing.
"I feel a lot of pressure," Bastian says. "But it's good pressure."
An assistant baseball coach at Sacramento City College in the late 1980s,
Bastian was asked to help with a local softball camp. Softball soon became his
second language.
As China's coach, he's had to learn to speak it in new ways. Among his coaching
tools is a fake light bulb.
He sets it atop his head when he wants to know whether his players understand a
concept he's trying to teach.
"I've become a master at charades," he says.
He has a translator, but on-field communication with his players is primarily
through body language. He limited his attempts at verbal instructions when
baserunners got mixed up between "Go, go, go!" and "No, no, no!"
Although the Chinese finished fourth again in last summer's worlds, there was
evidence of improvement. They held the USA to four hits in a 2-0 loss.
"They seemed to be sharper, a little bit more relaxed," says U.S. player Crystl
Bustos, who played for Bastian in the WPSL.
Japan won the recent Asian Games title; China finished third after being upset
by Taiwan. At the 2008 Olympics, the USA, Japan and Australia figure to be the
biggest hurdles to China ascending the podium.
"I think the Chinese are right on the verge," the ISF's Porter says, "because
they have good athletes. I think one of the problems in the past has been
coaching, because coaches have not been able to keep pace with the potential of
their athletes."
More power and confidence
Bastian found outdated equipment, teaching techniques and philosophies when he
arrived. He has spent the year lobbying for new equipment and convincing players
of such things as their potential to hit for power.
"They were always told by Chinese coaches they couldn't hit home runs, that
genetically it was physically impossible," he says.
He fashioned a hammer out of a titanium handle fitted with a bat grip on one end
and a mallet on the other to encourage players to swing with abandon.
"The American way of hitting is a lot different from the Asian way," catcher Lu
Yi says through a translator. "We didn't know our inner strength."
Bastian, she adds, "has brought a lot more confidence that we can win games."
To expose the players to more top competition, he brought the team to the USA
twice this year to play colleges and for a World Cup.
The travel included a swing through Las Vegas, where the players snapped photos
on the thrill rides at the Stratosphere, and a stop in Sacramento, where Bastian
introduced the team to his family.
Bastian has had to adjust to the Chinese sports culture, in which practice can
be grueling and usually is scripted in detail.
He has introduced his own style wherever possible, although his request to play
music over the loudspeakers as batters went to the plate at worlds was rejected.
Zhou Yin, one of two young pitchers that Chinese officials have given Bastian
permission to place in U.S. colleges, says through a translator, "The way he
practices is a lot more lively, happy."
At the team's practice facility, the intricate steelworks of Beijing's "Bird's
Nest," the main Olympic stadium for 2008, rise beyond right field, a constant
reminder of the goal before Bastian and his team — and a constant reminder of
why he's living a world apart.
"My dream," Bastian says, "is to have China play the U.S. in the gold medal game
in 2008."
HOB NOBBING AT PIETRO’s
Washingtonian magazine regularly names Pietro Santoro the area’s leading barber – famed for his flame cuts. Regulars include old LBJ hand Jack Valenti, just retired as the lobbyist for the Motion Pictures Association; Bert Lance, Carter’s budget director who flies up from Atlanta every few weeks for business and a trim; political comedian Mark Russell; Pat Buchanan (an aide to Nixon and Reagan and now a syndicated columnist; Bill Clinton, now a member of the Senate spouses club; former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, etc. Pietro has been cutting my hair for 36 years, ever since he got off the boat from Sicily. Yesterday, Pat and I were in adjoining chairs, and I teased him; a reader said I was a hardheaded Jesuit-educated die-hard Catholic, just like that other Georgetown product, Pat Buchanan. Pat and I reminisced; both started off as reporters; he went forward to national fame; I became a keeper of the secrets. We talked about the good and great; the civil war in Iraq; Washington’s second-hottest topic – whether either Hillary or Obama (Obambi as the media are wont to call him) can be elected, and if McCain’s support for Iraq puts him out of the running; Bill Clinton as the wild card, etc. We both laughed when Pat asked what in hell I promised the Arabs around the Gulf if they would seize Saddams bank accounts in PG I – I told them they could keep the money – which they did. Pat, who is much more conservative than I, shared with me his preview of 2008. Pietro hears all these conversations – and keeps his peace! That in itself is a rarity in today’s Washington.
FUND RAISING SUGGESTIONS WANTED
Mr. Hesse,
Would you send this message out to other coaches for me -
What do coaches' or travel teams do for fund raisers? Like many other colleges coaches I must fund raise for my southern trip. I am running out of ideas.
Thank you,
Peter
Coach
Peter Maneggia Jr
508-793-3627(W)/508-793-3863(F)
College of the Holy Cross
One College Street
Worcester, MA 01610
NO LONGER ASHAMED
Fairfax County topped national scrooge lists when its Health Department decided churches et al could no longer feed the homeless with any food prepared in homes, or even in non-approved church kitchens. I haven’t had much good to say recently aboy Gerry Connelly, a friend of 20 years when he was a key Senate staffer, who is now Chairman of the County Board of Supervisors. Very powerful politician; celebrated his election with dinner at my house – but taxes keep rising because the county keeps raising our assessment while applauding itself for not changing the tax rate. But, Gerry came through for Christmas – he rescinded the Health Department order, declaring that Fairfax would not turn its back on the poor. Damned county bureaucracy anyhow. I led the drive to build an outdoor pavilion and concession stand, with indoor toilets, next to the football field. Just before dedication, a county inspector refused a permit on grounds that we had a stove in the concession stand. Never cooked on it; boiled water for hot chocolate etc. He made the permit conditional on getting rid of the stove. Learned later from school maintenance this same county official came after school one evening and put the stove in his personal pickup truck.
rfh