Lady Vols Softball


There’s been no development of our pitchers for years now. We’re lucky Ashley is a girl from Meigs County and wanted to wear Orange. My wife and I are amazed at what she’s done despite Karen. Other elite pitchers in the state have gone elsewhere. Karen hires coaches who either submit to her or she fired them. She still thinks she’s the end all, be all when it comes to pitching. These high school girls, coaches and travel ball coaches who focus on pitching know better.
 
There’s been no development of our pitchers for years now. We’re lucky Ashley is a girl from Meigs County and wanted to wear Orange. My wife and I are amazed at what she’s done despite Karen. Other elite pitchers in the state have gone elsewhere. Karen hires coaches who either submit to her or she fired them. She still thinks she’s the end all, be all when it comes to pitching. These high school girls, coaches and travel ball coaches who focus on pitching know better.
Like Barnes we have what we have. These coaches won’t win us championships. Every year it’s the same. Agree with you 100%
 
There’s been no development of our pitchers for years now. We’re lucky Ashley is a girl from Meigs County and wanted to wear Orange. My wife and I are amazed at what she’s done despite Karen. Other elite pitchers in the state have gone elsewhere. Karen hires coaches who either submit to her or she fired them. She still thinks she’s the end all, be all when it comes to pitching. These high school girls, coaches and travel ball coaches who focus on pitching know better.
Hopefully Megan will be allowed to do what she is paid to do. I think even Ashley is better and the others are throwing strikes. It is going to be a slow ship to turn I’m afraid but I bet Megan can recruit. At least in game time Karen has seemed to turn it over to her.
 
Hopefully Megan will be allowed to do what she is paid to do. I think even Ashley is better and the others are throwing strikes. It is going to be a slow ship to turn I’m afraid but I bet Megan can recruit. At least in game time Karen has seemed to turn it over to her.

We shall see I guess. Renfro was our last All American at the position. I think Ashley can be our next one.
 
If you have never experienced Rhoades it is different than any other venue in the SEC

That's not what you said, though. You said they have never experienced an SEC series on the road.

It's okay to admit you're wrong on the internet. I've had to do it before and I promise I didn't burst into flames.
 
That's not what you said, though. You said they have never experienced an SEC series on the road.

It's okay to admit you're wrong on the internet. I've had to do it before and I promise I didn't burst into flames.

Well I knew Turner and some others had never experienced a SEC road series so I just grouped them all together
 
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There’s been no development of our pitchers for years now. We’re lucky Ashley is a girl from Meigs County and wanted to wear Orange. My wife and I are amazed at what she’s done despite Karen. Other elite pitchers in the state have gone elsewhere. Karen hires coaches who either submit to her or she fired them. She still thinks she’s the end all, be all when it comes to pitching. These high school girls, coaches and travel ball coaches who focus on pitching know better.

It's always been a joke that she calls pitches when she's not a pitching coach. It's clear she's a micromanager. But she was a lawyer before she was a coach, and she has the personality of a lawyer, so it's not a shock that she's a control freak. I'm honestly amazed that she gave that up to Megan.

WTBS, I still think lack of clutch hitting is as much of a problem as pitching, and probably moreso. It's a lot easier to have one elite pitcher win a game for you than it is for one elite hitter. As it stands, our hitters only perform well vs. weak pitching. We are not going to get into a scoring contest anytime soon with an elite hitting team if they are on against Rogers. Our best option is to hope Rogers can control elite teams and then scrape out a few runs, like what happened in game 1 of the series. Our team certainly hit better than Bama in game 1, but we still left 11 runners on base vs. 3 for Bama. That's why it was only a one run game.

I'm hoping our bats will come alive vs. Kentucky who's a much better hitting team than LSU and who has a similar team ERA. They are our next SEC series, after they play Bama next weekend.
 
Truth of the matter is that Karen does micro manage and we are not as good as some think we are! And yes she did go out to the mound today and talked to AR while Megan was on the bench. If she would get out of the way we would be better off and i dont actually mean go home but so be it. Marc has helped the hitters but way too many deer in the headlights looks on our power hitters. Another truth and it kills me to say it is that Bama is better by quite a bit than we are. If not the number 2 team then certainly in top 7/8 or so. Quality pitching is now and always been the game and a timely hit or two helps. We were lucky to win one and that is that. No one on here loves the LVs in all sports than i do and i just had time to watch his game after watching soccer and BB!
 
Wow that’s two plays at the plate where the ball beat the runner and Ally did not get the tag on the runner.
The first runner was clearly out..they showed the overhead view, she slide right into the tag. After they showed it the first time they never showed it again. The ump was out if position,made the wrong call. Thought Karen might jump out their and argue a bit!
 
Hopefully Megan will be allowed to do what she is paid to do. I think even Ashley is better and the others are throwing strikes. It is going to be a slow ship to turn I’m afraid but I bet Megan can recruit. At least in game time Karen has seemed to turn it over to her.

I remain unconvinced hiring a new coach will change anything as far as our perception on pitching. That is so baked in the cake with this program it would take a decade to reverse it.
 
There’s been no development of our pitchers for years now. We’re lucky Ashley is a girl from Meigs County and wanted to wear Orange. My wife and I are amazed at what she’s done despite Karen. Other elite pitchers in the state have gone elsewhere. Karen hires coaches who either submit to her or she fired them. She still thinks she’s the end all, be all when it comes to pitching. These high school girls, coaches and travel ball coaches who focus on pitching know better.

This is valid. You have the top pitcher in the class of 2021 in the state going to Ole Miss, the top pitcher for the 2022 class headed to LSU both pitchers are in your backyard.
 
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The rest of the schedule looks really promising and I think we could still be in the top four in the SEC this season. Glad to get a game down at Bama won't be to many SEC teams accomplish that this season. Now we have several SEC teams we should be able to win the series against so we'll see where we go from here.
 
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I posted this a few days ago but felt it may need a revisit. Because of pitching and lack of needs across the field.

Marty was seen coast to coast. Summer of 2019, I saw him in Atlanta, CA and Colorado in just a few weeks of each other. Games he was at all the other major programs were there too. I’ll give you an example of who they scout, a few years ago Marty was at a game scouting a team from Florida who had two pitchers 5’9-5’11 type kids. The kid who pitched against that team which was ranked #1 in 14U at the time won 1-0, giving up 1 hit over 7 innings, around 10K and lives in the Knoxville area.

Marty was not the issue IMO. The issue was other programs in the SEC pulling ahead while we stayed on cruise control and fell behind and the starting of other programs Duke and Clemson did not help. Summer of 2019, my daughters team had maybe the last missing piece for a team a 2021 uncommitted pitcher. It was a whos who in the stands watching, LSU, Bama, Clemson, Florida, Marty (no Weekly'), Purdue, ND and many more. Some schools had 1 usually the head coach, while the others had 2-3.

The story on Caylan Arnold was, she committed as a sophomore to MTSU. Backed away from that commitment went and camped at UK and blew up there, same time she got interest from FSU and Washington coming to town to see her. Marty was sent in to recruit her after that.

I talked with two top tier travel ball coaches in the last few weeks on Tennessee and recruiting, one here in the South who has kids going to the Big 10, multiple SEC and ACC schools and the other on the West coast who has kids headed to Big East, Pac-10, SEC and Notre Dame. Both said the same thing, Tennessee is not recruiting our kids. These programs each year are in the hunt for PGF. The coach on the West Coast said they'll get kids, like Lair but will she stay in Knoxville all 4 years is to be seen and the pitcher from WA was decent. Decent isn't how he describes players, he says she's legit when she can play

Right now in their backyard they have two pitchers headed to the SEC (Ole Miss and LSU) and a MI/slapper from Knoxville headed to TX AM. The 2022 class will be solid and fill in the needs but won't turn the program around when others are separating themselves- Pickens, Pannell and Sarvis are nice additions to any team. I do believe after next year the Weekly's will step aside and not renew their contracts. They have taken us to the Mountain Top of softball but it has been a slow coming down with no hardware to show. I don't want anyone to read into that except one fan seeing the years of recruiting in the summer up close and watching it play out now.
 
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I posted this a few days ago but felt it may need a revisit. Because of pitching and lack of needs across the field.

Marty was seen coast to coast. Summer of 2019, I saw him in Atlanta, CA and Colorado in just a few weeks of each other. Games he was at all the other major programs were there too. I’ll give you an example of who they scout, a few years ago Marty was at a game scouting a team from Florida who had two pitchers 5’9-5’11 type kids. The kid who pitched against that team which was ranked #1 in 14U at the time won 1-0, giving up 1 hit over 7 innings, around 10K and lives in the Knoxville area.

Marty was not the issue IMO. The issue was other programs in the SEC pulling ahead while we stayed on cruise control and fell behind and the starting of other programs Duke and Clemson did not help. Summer of 2019, my daughters team had maybe the last missing piece for a team a 2021 uncommitted pitcher. It was a whos who in the stands watching, LSU, Bama, Clemson, Florida, Marty (no Weekly'), Purdue, ND and many more. Some schools had 1 usually the head coach, while the others had 2-3.

The story on Caylan Arnold was, she committed as a sophomore to MTSU. Backed away from that commitment went and camped at UK and blew up there, same time she got interest from FSU and Washington coming to town to see her. Marty was sent in to recruit her after that.

I talked with two top tier travel ball coaches in the last few weeks on Tennessee and recruiting, one here in the South who has kids going to the Big 10, multiple SEC and ACC schools and the other on the West coast who has kids headed to Big East, Pac-10, SEC and Notre Dame. Both said the same thing, Tennessee is not recruiting our kids. These programs each year are in the hunt for PGF. The coach on the West Coast said they'll get kids, like Lair but will she stay in Knoxville all 4 years is to be seen and the pitcher from Oregon was decent. Decent isn't how he describes players, he says she's legit when she can play

Right now in their backyard they have two pitchers headed to the SEC (Ole Miss and LSU) and a MI/slapper from Knoxville headed to TX AM. The 2022 class will be solid and fill in the needs but won't turn the program around when others are separating themselves- Pickens, Pannell and Sarvis are nice additions to any team. I do believe after next year the Weekly's will step aside and not renew their contracts. They have taken us to the Mountain Top of softball but it has been a slow coming down with no hardware to show. I don't want anyone to read into that except one fan seeing the years of recruiting in the summer up close and watching it play out now.

I see recruiting part; they had to go out west for better recruits because the West coast was so far ahead of everyone else. The South has now caught up with the West, and a part of me thinks the Weekly's were being loyal to certain programs because of the relationships they had with the teams. I am now seeing the Weekly's coming back South to recruit and only go after certain girls from California, but an emphasis has been put back on Southern talent and just going as far as Texas. When I saw them recruiting Thunderbolt girls, I was pumped that is a program that is growing
 
I see recruiting part; they had to go out west for better recruits because the West coast was so far ahead of everyone else. The South has now caught up with the West, and a part of me thinks the Weekly's were being loyal to certain programs because of the relationships they had with the teams. I am now seeing the Weekly's coming back South to recruit and only go after certain girls from California, but an emphasis has been put back on Southern talent and just going as far as Texas. When I saw them recruiting Thunderbolt girls, I was pumped that is a program that is growing

Agree with that and it caught up to them. The upper level teams from the South are on par with the CA teams now in all areas of the game. For us to be successful moving forward, we have to establish keeping our Top Tier kids home 80% as well sprinkle kids in from the pipelines of GA, SC, CA, TX and NJ. The ones out of state cannot be misses but have to be plug in kids almost day 1.
 

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