The CT Softball Blog

As I was learning to coach back around the turn of the century, I learned something important.

It’s important to be flexible, to switch gears mid-journey, to switch-it-up and try something new, all in the name of finding success.

On a softball field, a basketball court, a soccer pitch, a field hockey field, a squash court, it’s all about finding a way to win.

There was a point earlier this season when I witnessed a one-win team successfully bunt in four straight at-bats against a team because the opposing coach simply (read stubbornly) refused to adjust his defense to play the bunt. The one-win team won and the other team, which was fighting for a state tournament berth, was home in early June.

Adjusting on the fly in sports is vital!

For the CT Softball Blog, I envisioned this as a place where softball players (past, present, and future), softball parents, and just softball fans-slash-lovers could come and celebrate the sport.

After all, a “blog” is short for “web-log” and that’s what I see the CT Softball Blog being—a place that gathers up all that is important or interesting to those who care.

As a journalist, my muscle memory is in telling stories and reporting the facts, be it in 500 words or 1,500. It’s time consuming and not easy—especially when all the other things that pile up in this thing we call life.

As such, sometimes the posts lag and I see it in the traffic—which while not the end-all, be-all of this idea is still needed if I want to make a few bucks off this site to make it better down the road.

So, now that we’re 16 months into this journey around the base paths, I believe it’s time to switch it up.

I’m adjusting on the fly.

When I first moved to Connecticut 18 years ago, I was the sports editor for the Wilton Villager newspaper, and I started one of The Hour Publishing Company’s first blogs—The Warrior Nation, which covered nothing but the town of Wilton’s sports scene.

This was back in the day before the bean-counters at Hearst Media Connecticut destroyed “local journalism, but the Warrior Nation became the second-most read entity behind The Hour’s actual website.

My motto for Warrior Nation: “Something New Every Day.”

Nobody comes back to a website where everything is the same.

So, with the high school season over, and the travel season well under way, my mid-game adjustment, if you will, is just that: “Something New, Every Day.”

Sometimes there might two or three new things a day, but with every day that passes there will be a new post at the top of the page.

A lot of our stories get put up on the CT Fastpitch Softball page and the moderators there, bless them, have allowed me to promote the CT Softball Blog because they know I’m doing all I can to promote the sport—from 10U to Little League to travel to high school to college.

I will not be posting every single daily post on the CT Fastpitch page, however. I’m not keen on flooding their feed in innocuous, albeit tidbits of information that I find important or interesting.

I just hope that if you, the reader, knows something new will be posted on this page every day, you’ll come back to see what it is.

The stories? The players making their college decisions? The coaches who are coming and going? The feature stories? Those will all still be here, I promise you that!

So, it’s just an adjustment—more bunts to get more runs, I suppose, to get the momentum truly flowing.

To all of you who have supported this endeavor and keep coming back for more, I think you profusely. (Please don’t forget: The CT Softball Blog has no paywall and we accept donations so we can keep the website open to all those who love this sport. Click here to donate, and yes, even $1 matters. (If 500 people had given me $1 over the first year of the blog, I could have covered 20 more games this past high school season).

In the end, it’s all about the kids lacing up their cleats and I want to keep promoting this sport until I can’t type anymore.

Will there be other changes down the line?

Probably.

For now, though, the third base coach has flashed me his or her signs (Sorry, I’m not one of those Blue 246.. no, wait, Green 871 kind of coaches) and we’re making the adjustment.

I hope you enjoy.

(From The Dugout is a regular column written by CT Softball Blog Publisher John Nash. He can be reached at jnash@ctsoftballblog.com)