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GUELPH — One of the goals for Matt Allen, named late last month to a second term on Softball Ontario’s coaching committee, is to keep athletes playing the sport.
“Athletes are burning out at a young age so they’re quitting softball specifically after their midget (seasons) or after they’ve competed at the intercollegiate level,†the Guelph resident said. “That’s the goal that we’re really striving towards right now.â€
Allen has first-hand knowledge of that experience as he put an early end to his playing days that started in Kingston.
“Right now I’m done with my playing career at the young age of 24,†he said. “I just didn’t have that fire or desire to be on the diamond that I did as a kid. Luckily for me, I found my niche in the coaching stream of things, but I just kind of lost my edge that I had growing up.â€
However, Allen did stay involved with the sport and he serves as the head coach of the varsity women’s team at Laurier and is also the president of the Ontario Intercollegiate Women’s Fastpitch Association. He knows that many of the players in that league will not play again once they’ve finished their schooling.
“At least 90 per cent, if not more, retire after they’ve completed their undergraduate time playing softball. That’s 21, 22 and they’ve stopped playing softball,†he said.
“One of the reasons they’re just tired. They’ve grown up since they were 8 or 9 years old playing softball, hockey or whatever sport it may be, every night of the week and every weekend and they’ve burnt out either mentally and emotionally or physically. By the time they’re at that 21 or 22 age, they just don’t want to play any more.â€
And that’s something the coaching committee feels the coaches should work toward avoiding and part of developing that ability is keeping up to date with the latest research on the subject.
Softball players in this area have plenty of choices of places where they can play.
“The general public’s assumption is that softball as a sport is dying,†Allen said. “Up here it’s great and it’s thriving – numbers are growing at the grassroots level and that’s something we want to maintain. There are definitely a lot of avenues that I could be playing in right now.â€
Men who want to remain in the game might have to do a minimal amount of travelling, but there are places to play.
“When you look at the demographics between the men’s game and the women’s game, it’s a lot different as a whole,†Allen said. “The men’s game seems to be a lot more rural, small-town softball – Puslinch and Ponsonby and those smaller areas have teams. In the girls’ side, it’s the major centres like Guelph and Kitchener and Brampton.â€
While the coaching committee is involved in the National Coaching Certification Program for Softball in Ontario at the community sport and competitive stream, Allen’s big thing will be as the chair of an international coaching symposium with Softball Canada that is to be held in Ontario in 2014.
He’s hoping that it will be a three-day workshop for coaches from grassroots right up to the Olympic national team level.
“That will be a difficult task given how many coaches we want to aim toward,†he said.
And he hopes that coaches will leave that symposium with the goal of keeping all players energized and interested in continuing in the sport, not just the elite players like Kaligh Rafter of Guelph.
“The goal of softball and of long-term player development is not to create the Kaleigh Rafters of the world, but to create athletes that who, if they want to get to that level, they get to that level but for them softball is a life-long sport and you can be playing up until your 60, playing a modified version of slo-pitch or whatever,†he said. “That’s really what the goal is: it’s not to create all of these Olympic national team level athletes. As a byproduct of what we’re doing, we will get those and we’ll see those down the road, but that’s not our total aim. Our aim is really to produce athletes that compete into their 30s and 40s.â€
