Softball Podcast 3-10-20

Congrats on the UVA Sweep: Coach has gotten a lot of positive feedback. Apparently beating UVA is a big deal around here.(yep, it is!)

Coach's First 6 games against UVA,and the Hokies haven’t allowed a run: It goes to show that we played pretty well. We don’t dwell on it. We celebrated last night, and now we’re ready to rock and roll. Chalk one up to the Pedettes.

Keely: Coach felt he used “impressive” too many times last week, so he used a thesaurus to look up words to describe Keely this week: exciting, extraordinary, momentous, majestic, profound, awe-inspiring, thrilling, splendid , remarkable – all of those apply. That’s how she threw this week. She was just lights out.

Keely had command of the strike zone, command of all of her pitches. It was fun to watch. She does her work. She wants the ball. He keeps asking her how she feels,- every time it’s “I feel great.” She had three pitches working for her this weekend. The hitters can’t set on one pitch. Batters can’t feel comfortable in the box and they end up chasing pitches.

First impression of Keely when he was hired: Coach had some film of her against Georgia Tech her freshman year. He was thinking “this kid could be pretty good.” He was anxious to see how much better she could be with Doug.

She has a bunch of pitches in her arsenal now. Her quiver is full. It’s hard work. She’s buying in to what Doug is talking about.

She didn’t lose any velocity on Sunday. It almost looked like she was throwing harder. It’s hard to keep your pitch count down when you’re striking out people, but she did. Her pitch count stayed down. She’s just pumping strikes.

Both Mac and Keely are really comfortable with each other. Coach believes Mac caught Keely a lot in travel ball, so they have 3, 4, 5 years of being comfortable with each other. Doug didn’t call pitches this weekend. Mac just calls it and Keely just throws it. If Keely doesn’t like it, she shakes it off. They have a pretty good rhythm going right now.

Positives at the plate this weekend: Home run ball was the story on Friday. Jayme crushed one and had another one that should have been out if the wind wasn’t blowing in so hard. . Grace’s ball was hit so hard – it didn’t get 8 feet off the ground. It was a laser. Very rarely do you see balls hit that hard. Her ball was just smoked…There’s times that Coach just hopes that our hitters don’t hit it towards him.

Kelsey (Brown) and Darby just give us good at bats all the time. The one thing about that (Friday) game is that we struck out too many times. . Rayle threw pretty well, but if they get you the first time, let’s do something different. Towards the end of the game, we did that – Coach would just like for us to do it earlier.

Saturday (6-0): Maddie Banks put the bat on the ball. She had a good weekend. She’s playing stellar defense, which is good to see. It was a different game from Friday. We had to manufacture some runs. If the home run ball isn’t working, we can still manufacture runs. We’ve got some speed on the team. If need be, we just put the ball on the ground and see what happens.

Kelsey Bennett: She’s kinda in a lull right now. Swinging and missing just a little bit too much, but she’s fine - I’m not worried about her. She’s really close to being back to where she needs to be. Defensively, she’s giving us really stellar defense on third. Pitching and defense wins in conference. I don’t care about offense. If you have good defense and can pitch, you can win every game.

Sunday (7-0): Meredith Slaw – good weekend for her. She made a really good play at first base going to her right and backhanded a ball. It was a good play. Defensively, she’s solid. Offensively, she hit a couple of balls on the screws that just were hit right at people. She never gets down or sulks. She just analyzes her at bat and just goes about her business. That last one, Coach told her they might go middle in on her and she was ready. She hit it into the wind for a homerun. A really impressive shot.

Jayme Bailey is just steady. She’s kinda like a position player with the demeanor of Keely. Just goes about her business. Never too high or low. It’s easy to be consistent when you’re like that. If she has a bad at bad – okay, let’s get the next one. She had a good weekend and has had a pretty good year so far.

Conference games are a big deal. It’s a different beast. It’s like a second season. To go 3-0 is a big deal.

Support of Hokie Nation. It was huge for us. Coach looked up at the stands and the whole side of our side of the stadium was packed. Standing room only. It’s a big deal. Our kids need that. Coach thinks we have a brand of softball that people want to see,. The average fan is used to seeing games on TV with a lot of rah rah and stuff like that. Our program doesn’t do that. When you watch us, we are professional and we play hard. We are blue collar. Coach thinks that the team is the embodiment of what Virginia Tech athletics wants. Coach thinks people are gravitating to that. We want to make the university proud of how we play.

It was a team effort. That’s the thing about conference. You can’t be concerned about individual performance. Get the “W” and get out of town. Conference is a different beast. Wins are important to conference.

Busy week. We leave Tuesday at 7:00am. Coach had planned to go from Charlottesville to DC last night, but the NCAA said “not so fast.” You have to have an off day in Blacksburg so the team came back to Blacksburg for a night. They are just biding time to get back on the bus. Looking forward to playing in northern Virginia. It’s an untapped market. Hopefully we’ll see some good crowds. Good talent up there. Untapped potential.

This weekend at home. It will be nice to play on our own field. We’re 25 games into the season and haven’t been on our field once. One of the things is that we’re kinda conditioned to be a road team. We only have 16 home games out of 56. We have to take care of business Tuesday and Wednesday and then see how it rolls this weekend. We’re just road dogs now and have a routine. Sometimes there are distractions of playing at home.

It would be nice to have some home games before conference games to get our feet wet. It’s just another wrinkle.

NC State: We know what we’re getting. They want to hit home runs and they’re not shy about it. We’ll just throw Keely and see where it rolls. Come on out and see us. There's now more chairback seating.

Finally, a Personal Note from Chip:

As I'm going through the Podcast and transcribing as fast as my one finger hunting and pecking will allow, I hear Evan ask coach about Ms. VTChip and I. Suddenly, I find myself frozen in time. I'm not vain enough to transcribe that portion, but it was so very, very kind of both Evan and Coach D'Amour to mention us. It was a special moment we won't forget. It little things like that that truly makes Virginia Tech a special place.

Okay, onto the George Mason game Wednesday and then the big weekend with NC State.

Let's Go Hokies!