Fastpitch Books

Great Book! Gave mine to a friend and am ordering another. If you love your Coach, buy him or her this book.

The book is a little more advanced than what I needed right now coaching 8 & U coach pitch softball, but it does a great job of showing you the direction your coaching should be going as the kids get older. That in turn has influenced how I teach these young girls. Many of the fine drills in this book are too advancd for my age group, but I was able to simplify them a little to make them easier for 7-8 year olds. If your coaching 6-10 year old kids and can only buy one book, this may not be the one. But it is a great book to have in your coaching library. The best I have seen, my kids just are not quite ready for it yet.

I have coached for over ten years now and have found this book to be the most comprehensive, theoretically sound, user friendly coaching handbook on the market. Veroni has organized the information most effectively using charts and diagrams in addition to her commentary. This is THE book to purchase for both the beginning or experienced high school coach.

This book is comprehensive and is aimed at the coach of a team consisting of younger or much younger players. Kathy Veroni sounds like a tough, fair, and thorough coach. Imagine driving a group of late-arriving players 10 miles out of town and telling then to jog back to practice. No wonder West Illinois U has a great softball team.
However, as a captain of a mens' fastpitch softball team, with players who play once a week, this book did not help me much. The drills were just too involved and required a much higher commitment and lower physical strength than I have from the guys on my team. It's like using a college-level calculus text when all you want to learn is high school algebra.
Having said that, the big plus of this book is the VERY EXTENSIVE list of both defensive and offensive drills. This section of the book makes the purchase price worthwhile.

This is a very well laid out book and easy to follow. I would highly recommend this book for coaching high school or college age girls. Might be a little deep for younger athetes but could be adapted. Many drills are included in this book, and I found the philosophies especially interesting. Brought out a lot of simple points I had never thought of before.

I have two daughters, an eighth grader who is really into softball, and a fourth grader who is just getting into the sport. I ran across this new drills book and highly recommend it. It's really organized, with good pictures to go along with the drills. And it's great for both of my girls. I'm definitely going to tell their coaches about it.

As a league administrator, I'm always looking for great coaching
resources for the coaches in our league. I love this book because it's
a combination coaching and drills book. Many drills books out there
just have drills (with a smattering of ad hoc remarks on mechanics).
But this book is different. Every section of the book has a thorough
discussion of the required mechanics (hitting, pitching, defensive
footwork, infield defense, outfield defense, etc.), followed by a slew
of drills. The book contains a progression of drills for every level of
player (youth league level, as well as tons of "advanced variation"
drills for travel league and high school players). The book is very
organized, and therefore is a great resource for coaches to refer back
to on a regular basis. You can tell that Michele Smith is a stickler
for details because the photos and captions are very detail oriented and
helpful. All and all a fantastic resource!

This book is a great reference for any coach of U10, U12, U14 and high school girls softball. The book is very organized and well written, and explains very clearly the fundamentals behind each drill. As expected, the pitching chapter is excellent. But the hitting and the defense chapters are also outstanding. There are lots of advanced level coaching tips throughout the book, including in each drill's "hints" section. Michele Smith is in alot of the photos personally demonstrating the mechanics and drills. The diagrams are good, and clutter free.

This is a great book for beginners and advanced players. Easy to read tips and instruction on all aspects of the game including pitching. Terrific for players, parents, coaches and instructors. Lots of tips from College Coaches and players. Highly recommended.

Very comprehensive book. I learned something new EVERY chapter! It will be on my desk and passed along to my players for years to come.

THE BOOK I WOULD RATE AS EXCELLENT. THE VIDEO AS LISTED IN YOUR ,(WAS ALSO BOUGHT BY )LISTING MISLED US TO BELIEVE THIS WAS A FASTPITCH HITTING VIDEO. IT IS NOT AND THEREFORE A WASTE OF MY MONEY.

This is a great book. I found the information to be very helpful and easy to read. Highly Recommend it.

The Windmill Pitcher is a great book for any coach, player, and parent. I highly recommend this for parents of pitchers. It is well written with execptional illustrations of the correct mechanics for the windmall pitcher. I've been around the game all my life and seen many good pitchers. The great pitchers have solid mechanics. This is a must have for fastpitch softball.

Illustrations are not clear enough for a beginner to understand. I pitched fastpitch for over 35 years and I had trouble understanding what was being taught.

Overall, I was not too impressed with the book. I probably won't use it as a reference for my pitching school.

Review: The Windmill Pitcher

In the book, The Windmill Pitcher, it talks about how to play softball, and different ways to pitch. This book has the best description of how to pitch, and also different ways to pitch. If pitchers and coaches have questions about coaching, or pitching they can refer to this book. It has many different ways and diagrams to show and describe pitching. It tells you what to do for ball control, and what you need to do to improve your pitching mechanics. There are many different ways to pitch in fast pitch softball, such as; Slingshot, Single Pump, and Double Pump. I would recommend this book to pitchers and coaches that LOVE softball.

I keep this book with me all the time during softball season ! I have been coaching for 9 years and and have learned quite a few things from this book. It's nice to be able to go back to it and review. It covers the windmill pitcher from A to Z. Very Very Good !

I have a collection of tapes from various people. It would seem that video would be the best medium for this kind of instruction. Maybe it's because I viewed and re-viewed the tapes so often, but I honestly got more detail out of this book than anything else I've used. The discussion of each piece of the mechanics along with drills I haven't seen on any tape was very, very helpful.

I would strongly recommend this book. It's straight-up, no hype instruction. Excellent for beginning or intermediate pitchers and/or coaches.

Pros:
- Variety of topics covered including fund raising, recruiting, mental, and play aspects
- Advice from several sources
- A handful of good tables and info-graphics

Cons:
- In many cases, about 1/2 of each chapter consists of the given "expert" telling you why they are "great." I realize they are probably trying just trying to establish their value as an expert on the subject, but it's very annoying.
- Rather than properly developing ideas a coach can use for his or her own team, there are brief overviews of some ideas and other ideas are often repeated only with different wording in later chapters.
- I found the chapter on pitching especially horrible.

This book is called "The Softball Coaching Bible", and indeed, in the sense that The Bible is a collection of stories being retold with a greater purpose, this book holds true. However, if your intent for this book is as a manual, then I recommend you pass on it and check out some of the other books out there.

This book is a must for those coaches whom are just starting their coaching journey. You receive priceless advice from todays all time greats of the game. This is the WHOS WHO of todays softball coaching world.

How to use imaging and batting teee together for a mental training on hitting. The idea is very good and useful. Not very interesting the
"spiritual" side of the booklet.

As the head coach of a junior high fastpitch and also a 14U travel team, I stress the mental aspect of the game, which is believed to be 90% of the game. This book is particularly helpful for travel teams that play numerous tournaments each season. Having your players in top physical and mental condition, whether it is the first game at 8:00am on Saturday morning to the fourth game of the same day at 8:00pm,this book covers how to prepare teams to endure that kind of schedule. Energy utilization, positive thinking, and overall conditioning are addressed, while incorporating softball specific drills to bring out the best in players. I gave this three stars because it applies more to high school and college age girls playing on travel and elite teams.