Coaches Corner with Softball’s John Gallagher

Coaches Corner with Softball Coach John Gallagher

The ReSporter: Thanks for spending time with us, How do you manage girls with

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slumps that are in your line-up? Is it based on years of experience on whether you move the player up or down? How much does speed play a percentage of what you would do?

Coach Gallagher: “Slumps happen to everyone. You just hope its not more than one player at a time and that it is only for a short period of time.

Moving the batting order depends on how a player responds in given situations such as not hitting when runners are on base or moving speed up or down based on who’s hitting behind them.

Speed plays a big role. You place players with speed at the top to get on and have your contact hitters drive them in.”

The ReSporter: District always has an effect on players across the board, all of your offensive numbers are down…How do you manage to get better results as you reach the most important week of the season?

Coach Gallagher: “District is another season. We play seven innings with no time limit compared to tournaments where you might play 4-5 innings with a 1:30 time limit. Most of your district games are tight and there is more pressure on the girls. They know what is at stake each game. Offensive numbers always go down in district play because we face good pitching and defense each and every game.”

The ReSporter: What is your major concern going into this stretch to rectify?

Coach Gallagher: “We will continue to concentrate on hitting and finding ways to get on base more this week during practice.”

The ReSporter: What are some things that are going well?

Coach Gallagher: “Confidence is the biggest intangible we have working for us. Knowing we have been in every game and knowing we can win is our focus. I don’t have one major concern but I would like us to feed off each other’s energy and work ethic.

Believing in each other and playing with a chip on our shoulder hopefully will result in many positives. I feel we have done a good job of getting runners on base but have been inconsistent with scoring, and our hitting is coming back to where it was a month ago.”

The ReSporter: What needs to happen besides the obvious (win the rest of the games answer), to reach one of those playoff spots?

Coach Gallagher: “To reach the playoffs, we need to take care of one game at a time and build on that. It is still a close race and other than Bandera who is in first, the rest of the teams are within a game of each other.”

The ReSporter has not seen every team in district yet, but of the ones witnessed, Canyon Lake does not seem to be overmatched by any stretch of thinking in having your present record…How do you assess this Hawk team going into your last two weeks of play?

Coach Gallagher: “This team doesn’t have quit and will keep working hard every day to get better.”

The ReSporter: Thanks Coach for spending time and answering these questions. Good luck this week!!