Mike Coutts believes that winning softball teams have the better hitters, better pitchers and better mental approach.
It is the mental trait that may be behind the University of Maine’s success this spring. The Black Bears qualified for the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2004.
Maine (28-19) will play Georgia (40-17) in a regional double-elimination first-round game in Athens, Georgia, at 3:30 p.m. Friday. The game will be preceded by the opener between Oklahoma State (29-24) and Northwestern (29-29).
The host Bulldogs are ranked in the Top 20 (between 15th and 19th in the three national polls) and will make their 15th consecutive NCAA tournament appearance. Georgia won its first 11 games this season and struggled down the stretch in the tough Southeastern Conference, losing seven of its last 10 and nine of its last 14.
But the Bulldogs went 20-7 at home and hit .354 as a team, fourth-best in the nation.
The Black Bears will be underdogs but also believe their mental approach has put them in a very good place.
“It’s come together for us,” said Coutts, who took over as head coach last summer, replacing his wife, Lynn, after she was named an associate athletic director at UMaine.
“Obviously you’ve got to have decent players. But more than anything these days it’s about chemistry and culture, and kids being unselfish and playing for each other. That’s a hard thing to get.”
As the team prepared for the America East tournament, junior pitcher Erin Bogdanovich (the conference pitcher of the year from South Portland) and senior catcher Janelle Bouchard (the conference player of the year) talked about how much team chemistry factored into the Black Bears’ success.
“We spend so much time preparing for the mental side of the game,” said Bouchard, who is from Kennebunk.
It started last summer with a reading assignment for the team: “The Energy Bus” by Jon Gordon. Afterward, Coutts said, “The girls understood the importance of being positive and being around the right people.”
Coutts said the Black Bears now do five things each day to improve their focus and team chemistry:
• A team member has to send a text message to everyone in the program with a quote and why it’s important to her. She also picks the next person to send the message.
• A team member is assigned to call an inspirational-message hotline. At practice she tells her teammates about the message was and what it meant to her.
• A team member has to read a passage from “The Daily Dominator,” a book by sports performance coach Brian Cain that includes a lesson of the day. The player then tells her teammates what the lesson means to her. Coutts said the team has Skyped with Cain four times this year to help retain their mental focus.
• At the beginning of the year, the players had to select words or phrases that would become the team’s five core principles. They came up with “represent, toughness, family first, all-in and finish.” Each day at practice, Coutts will pick a player, give her one of those core principles and ask her to say what it means to her.
• Finally, Coutts will ask the team a question – such as, “What does preparation mean?” – and the players have to talk about it. “It gets you on the same page thinking about the importance of those words,” he said.
Through these exercises, Coutts and his players believe they formed a bond that will carry them through adversity.
“I told the kids, ‘I can teach you how to hit and pitch and field, but if you’re not doing the other stuff off the field and not making a commitment to your teammates, we have no shot at winning.’ ”
Coutts also sometimes comes up with a theme for a practice, telling a player that she has to pick a teammate to dedicate that practice to.
“It makes them practice a little harder,” he said. “We try to make practice really important so that the games didn’t become really important.”
It appears to have worked. The Black Bears have great confidence in their ability to hit (.320 batting average, 33rd in the nation), pitch (3.01 ERA, 12 shutouts) and field (.960 fielding percentage, only 52 errors).
They are willing to do whatever is needed to help the team. Junior Rachel Harvey, for instance, was a catcher last year but told Coutts she wanted to learn the outfield. “She went home last summer, learned the outfield and played left field for us every day,” said Coutts. She also hit .352, second on the team to Bouchard’s .395.
Pitching was a question entering the season. But Maine has three pitchers it can count on, led by Bogdanovich, who is 10-4 with two saves and a 2.87 ERA, and sophomore Molly Flowers, who is 11-10 with a 2.58 ERA and 142 strikeouts in 1081/3 innings.
“We’ve got to do what our team does best,” Coutts said of the NCAA tournament. “We’ve got to go play with the mentality that we can win and that we’ve got to play good. We don’t have to play great but we have to play good.
“That comes from our preparation and our mental game and staying in the moment, all the stuff we’ve talked about all year. We’ve got to have a championship mindset.”
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