Berkeley Springs High School girls softball team made too many errors in 2007. Many of those mistakes were of the mental variety. In fact, the Indians made 11 errors in the two games they dropped to Frankfort, by respective scores of 5-2 and 5-4 in the Region II, Section I championship, eliminating the Indians from the post-season. Therefore, girls softball Coach Greg Brown is focusing much of his attention in the preseason on making the right decisions, whether in the field or running the bases, being in the proper position to make the right plays and knowing where to go with the ball in any situation.
We've worked a lot on the mental part of the game, said Brown. What's the situation? Where am I going with it? Who's covering the base? Coach Sirbaugh (Fred) is always talking about how important that six inch playing field between the ears is. We explain to the girls that we realize everyone is going to drop a ball and everyone is going to strike out. It's part of the game. We can live with physical errors, but a mental error is unacceptable. Another thing we are doing is concentrating on technique and trying to quicken our reactions. If you can gain one-tenth of a second because of your form, a lot more of the
