Baseball Update - Etherton's versus Steinert High School

One of the things I love most about baseball is the sense if drama approaching mysticism that is routinely involved in the game. How else can you explain the Yankees losing four straight to Boston on the Red Sox way to winning the World Series after so many years of the Curse of the Bambino?

This week there was a version of that striking a little closer to home. Both Etherton's, Dan and Steve, pitched against the respective Steinert team, Varsity and Freshmen within a 4 day period.

To keep things brief, both outings had highlights and lowlights. Both were lit up pretty badly by the strongest program in the region but both suffered from the defense giving away too many errors causing the pitchers to have to get too many outs.

The scores were 12-3 for the varsity loss and 8-7 for the freshman loss. Both Etherton' pitched well for 4 innings but had 1 bad inning giving up 8 runs and 7 runs respectively.

In addition, both show promise as pitchers who throw strikes but pitch at about 70 percent velocity because of thier mechanis. Room for improvement or potential for becoming truly special, time and work will tell.

It was great to be present for both games although I agonize over each pitch and every missed play or ball hit hard. I'ld like to be able to coach them to meet thier potential but I recognize its in thier hands and thier trust in thier coaches and willingness to assess what could improve and work to make it happen.

In all, two good days, almost...

Sent from my GoodLink synchronized handheld (www.good.com)

2 Hours Until First Pitch

There is a little over two hours until the first pitch of the baseball game between the Princeton High School varsity team (Little Tigers) and the Steinart High School varisty team (team mascot unknown) for the first game in the 2007 Mercer County Baseball Tournament. This game pits the #1 ranked team (SHS) against the #16 ranked team (PHS) in a game that has a story within a story within a story.

The match-up would have probably seen PHS Colin Sarafin take the mound against the highly touted SHS team. Unfortunately, due to an archaic and unfair high school eligibility ruling, Colin Sarafin was declared ineligible for the first 10 games of the spring 2007 season due to playing on the Peddie High School JV team when he was in the 8th grade. I know this rule is to prevent older players from playing multiple years of varisty but as is typical with these things, it was used against the PHS team by local teams who had suffered defeat from the Princeton ace, even though he is the same age as his peers.

The story within the story is that Dan Etherton (yes, my son) will be taking the mound to lead the Princeton defense. This will be his 3rd outing as a starter this year after pitching sporadically over the past several years. Dan has been focusing his efforts on being the best centerfielder and hitter that he can be but he has stepped up to the challenge in a remarkable way. Possibly no one would be able to fend off the strong Steinart offense, but Dan gets to take on that challenge in a little less than 2 hours.

I'll report the outcome by tomorrow. Wish the PHS Little Tigers well as they are the underdogs we always want to cheer for. More later.

Update on Strengths

It's been several weeks since I blogged about the strengths revolution. As with anything, it seems that things get bogged down with all the hub-bub of the routines of the day. The past several weeks have been among the busiest with regard to large servings of crisis-du-jour.

To update you on the strengths revolution in my own work area, the entire group took the Strengths-Finders 2.0 survey and we presented our results to one another. It was a good exercise in individual self-awareness and also with regard to functioning better as a team. We created a strengths grid indicating everyone's five dominant strengths and discussed how people cluster as well as how people exhibit individual specialities.

Of the 34 personality themes, our work group covered 26. Not a bad range for the group. I will post the grid when I can access the chart. It is a good representation for the way multiple people working in a team may team or partner for specific strengths that may be missing from one's own reportorie. If anyone is interested in the grid as a template for your own team strengths evaluaiton, it is available for a nominal contribution to HomeFieldAdvantage.

The next steps we are undertaking are to continue to bring our individual and group strengths more into play in our work. We are viewing the Marcus Buckingham series, "Trombone Player Wanted." The giist of this is to review what activities "make us strong" and to determine how to bring those forward in our daily work.

Well, more to come. Let me know if there are any questions about the strengths approach. It would also be good to hear individual testimonials about how focusing on strengths have helped others. Feel free to add your stories. Stay strong!