Shameless bragging part deux

Last night was our final softball game. We played the same team we played on Monday as a make-up for a game they had to cancel a week or so ago.The coaches of this team stink. It's a woman and a man. When they start losing, they start making complaints and trying to say pitchers are not pitching legally and they disrupt the whole game. They argued with Monday's umpire and did not want to obey his rulings and turned the whole end of the game into a circus.
Now, the fact is, our 2- 9th grade pitchers do take a hop off the rubber and this is not legal. This is usually not called by coaches or the umpires in recreation ball unless it is a large hop toward home plate. In high school, or on travelling teams, yes they call hops as illegal pitches. BUT Olivia does not do this. In the 5 years she has been pitching, she just never developed that habit.  She pitches legal and has never had a problem with ANY coach or umpire. Now, the kicker of this is that ALL of their pitchers take their foot off the rubber when they pitch but WE would never complain about such a thing. There is almost no way to keep your push-off foot glued to a 5 inch piece of rubber when you have all that forward motion going on in your pitch unless you nail your foot to the ground. These are 12-14 year old girls and windmill
pitching is the most difficult form of pitching there is. Let the kids play ball for Heaven's sake. But there is a reason these coaches do this. On Monday, they rattled our 9th grade pitcher so badly when they stopped the game  to complain, and she got so nervous, she could not pitch at all. She walked in 7 runs which tied up
a game we were winning easily. Luckily, we were last at bat and our first girl got on base and stole 2 bases, 2nd girl struck out, and then this poor pitcher, who now felt so awful about her performance, knocked in the winning run. Cut to last night. Our starter pitched 3 innings. They complained about her hop. The umpire, who was deaf by the way but did a fantastic job calling this game, has to call the pitch illegal and he did not. Olivia was slated to pitch in the 4th and 5th, which were our final innings due to time limits on games. Liv is thin and small for a pitcher and people don't expect her to throw as well as she does. As soon as the inning started, (she was throwing well),  they tried to say that she
was sliding her right foot slightly off the rubber. Now, NOBODY calls this illegal. She does not hop and replant her right foot forward of the rubber, lose contact with the ground with her pivot foot, or wind up closer to home plate, giving the batter less reaction time. If anything, because there is always a hole in front of the rubber because of girls digging their push-off foot in, her foot tips off the front of the rubber into the hole but her heal is either on the rubber or right in front of it with no hop whatsoever and no gained advantage of being closer to home plate. You cannot avoid this and everybody does it, which is why that hole is there to begin with. They were just seeing if they could rattle her
and it dawned on me afterward that they were complaining about her to try to get Victoria put on the mound in hopes she would walk in a batch of runs like she did on Monday. NOT cool. The coach was being an arse. Tells Timmy to come watch from 1st base. He said, "I can see from here, she is fine." I was upset. She pitches totally legally and this guy was trying to make something out of nothing. I was so afraid Liv would not be able to pitch. This has never happened to her. She is our youngest pitcher and has not pitched all that much this season. We only got 10 games in and she missed 3 of them. Well she struck out 2 batters and fielded a grounder and threw the girl out at first. TAKE THAT Woodcliff Lake coach! HA!!!! The next and final inning, mind you, we are creaming them and they are being outplayed in all aspects, they try to rattle her again. They never call time out, they just walk onto the field and start complaining. I was having palpitations by this time. Well, their coach charged toward the mound from coaching first base. You NEVER approach someone else's player and you NEVER go to the pitching mound when it's not your pitcher up there. I said, "WHOA!" Dave, our head coach, who hates confrontation and any ugliness at all, charged out there. I had to grab Tim who was ready to go toe-to-toe with this guy for approaching Liv like that. You cannot
have more than one coach on the mound so Tim had to stay with me. The guy showed the umpire what he was
complaining about. Dave said, "Get away from my pitcher!" A few pitches later, the umpire stopped and said that her foot did look like it might be just off the front edge of the rubber but Liv had no idea what was going on. We thought he was complaining that a girl on 1st base left the base too early on her lead. Why in the world would he allow our starter to take a small hop and call Liv, when she doesn't pick her foot up at all.  Well, because this coach was complaining, he felt he had to make a warning to appease him. My poor kid was like a deer
in the headlights. This man could not speak well and used arm motions alot so she was confused. Me and Tim just kept telling her
to shake it off and just pitch. Our head coach's daughter ran for a short pop up from first base and caught it, and then Liv ended the game with 2 strike outs. We won 20 to 5. Olivia made 5 out of the 6 outs in the 2 innings she pitched and I could not be prouder that this 13 year old kid kept her head after all these disruptions from a grown man trying to intimidate her and yet, she triumphed like that. It was a good way to end the season. Our girls played well. I was on a high all night after seeing Liv do that. The girl rocks!
Coaches need to let the girls play their game. It's about them, not your ego. Our team is not a "killer instinct" type of team and we always show good sportsmanship. I felt bad for their own girls too because they were a good group of kids (I even complimented their catcher on a great catch) whose coaches ruin this for them.
Let the kids play and have a good time. If someone is cheating or playing unfairly, by all means, talk to the umpire and get it taken care of but otherwise, do your best and show your players that you are a good sport too. Kudos to Liv!!! What a brave kid she is.