Yesterday the coaches invited Team Indiana to the Nantou tournament next year. It may be tricky with High School, but I think it can be done and would be a valuable learning experience for the team. The teams at this tournament are pretty good.

I can’t believe this trip is almost over. Today is my last coaching assignment. This experience has taught me so much. I can’t wait to see everyone, and share my photos and my experiences. And…have an adult conversation in complete sentences! I miss everyone and I will be back very very soon!
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I had to say goodbye to Cookie when we left for Nantou. It broke my heart when she ran along side the bus as we were leaving. Some of the players have told me they will feed her when I leave. I am sure she will be fine. Maybe I should bring her home.

It took us around 4 hours to get to here. Nantou is surrounded by mountains and is more like a small town. I am not sure how it started, but this is the hotbed for softball. I would say half the team plus all the coaches are from Nantou. You can tell they take great pride in this tournament and are very proud to show me their hometown. Although… I sprained my foot playing basketball with my translators. And the worst part about it all, we were kicking butt! But anyway my goal is to be able to walk without pain before the 7th. I went to a chinese doctor last night and he wrapped my foot in this herbal spread. The swelling has gone down, but I still can’t put weight on my foot. I am a little worried about the trip home. Cherri said just to get rides at the airport and I think I will. I want to go into the mountains and Sun Moon Lake on my two days off before I leave for Taipei. One of the players on the Nantou team is Native and her people reside in the mountains. I think her tribe is called Bandou. Anyway I would really like to see that culture and meet the people.

Last night was the tournament banquet. It was at a Japanese resturant which was odd. However, the food was wonderful except for the fish with eyeballs. I have tried and enjoyed almost everything put in front of me, but for some reason I cannot get over the fish head. I had raw fish in wasabi sauce. It was delicious.

Here are a couple photos from my time in Kaoshiung. When I have more time, I’ll post some from Nantou.

I woke up with no real plans except to take my bike and go get coffee. Then I got a knock on my door and 5 of the players told me they were taking me to the beach for a Barbeque! I grabbed my backpack and out the door I went. There are two pitchers here from the Philippines and they were also invited. The two pitchers speak Spanish to one another and one speaks excellent English, but neither speaks Chinese. One player from the team has taught herself English from TV and popular music. While driving to our destination we were all able to understand each other with our broken Chinese, Spanish, and English. Switching back and forth we managed to get our point across clearly.

Our tour guide and driver, Voice, dropped us off at a ferry which we took to a tiny little island. The last time I was on a boat in an Ocean I was Salmon fishing in San Francisco and puked for hours. Luckily, the trip was only 5 minutes and I never lost my land legs or stomach. Two of the players arrived early and set-up camp underneath a tree very close to the water. This was not a propone tank barbeque, and we didn’t even use charcoal, they collected wood from around the tree and burned it to coals. Our feast consisted of goat, foot long big bacon and thin loin strips, salted whole fish, tofu, and peppers. It was delicious and a great change of pace from the cafeteria food. I had a real problem when they killed the fish by hitting it over the head with a mallet. I think the fish was still alive and moving when they put it on the grill. When it was done they just put it on a plate and dug in with their chopsticks. Each bite I took of the fish I had visions of it flopping around on the grill. It was so tasty, but I couldn’t get over the whole kill the fish image. And since the head was still attached I felt like the fish was somehow watching me. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures.

I didn’t get a chance to get out of the complex today, but as I was entering the library a player drove up in her SCOOTER. She left the keys in the ignition and gave me the go. I rode around the complex and nearly took off out the front gate but then thought better of it.

From what I can tell the city has a terrible stray dog problem. There are several dogs throughout the complex that hang out on the track. There is one dog which I call Cookie (because she looks like an oreo) that has made her home close to one of our practice fields. Until today she has responded to my calls with a wagging tail but she never ventured close. She seems more civilized than the other dogs. So today I got smart and took food and water to practice. On my first day Coach Bill gave me a bag of little, dried fish. I only had one So I brought the rest out to Cookie and now I have a friend for life. By the beginning of practice she learned how to sit and stay. I may just have to sneak her into my room and give her bath. She is small enough to fit into my backpack.

My Cookie

It is all about speed. No thrills, no bells and whistles, just swing, and swing fast. A hitter can never get fast enough. Yes there is plate coverage, and hitting movement and off-speed, but when it is all said and done a hitter’s explosive speed and will-to-win will matter most. There is a lot of emphasis on tracking, but I believe it is all about form and swing speed. There is a logical progression with the learning structure and you cannot skip the steps, but there comes a point when conditioning plays a greater role in the success and performance of a hitter. Not knowing the language has really pushed me as a coach to find other means to communicate.

There is a hitter here who we call Da Pow, which translates into BIG HIT, and what I noticed first was her lack of follow-through and extension. On the follow-through it is the path of the bat and the distance it travels that is important, not the type of style. Whether a hitter is using a top-hand release or uses two hands on the follow-through, they must allow the bat to travel the same distance with equal speed. If they shorten or slow down they actually slow down before contact. Trust me, this is a hard concept to explain through a translator who has no prior softball knowledge. Da Pow is an experienced player with unbelievable power and strength. After several failed attempts through my translator to explain what was happening in her swing, I pulled out the camera and the Right View Pro. Within 5 minutes she understood exactly what was happening and made the correct adjustments. I used baseball and softball examples.  It also goes to show sometimes we don’t have to tell a player anything. Great athletes are usually very visual and can solve problems on their own. We facilitate the learning with the proper learning environment and tools. I see coaches who never played over-coach and not prepare players to think on their own.

Once again Coach Bill drove up on his scooter. I am beginning to get the hang of this whole scooter thing. (MOM don’t worry I won’t rent one while I am here.) We headed straight for a street cart and ordered buns, then we squeezed into a little restaurant to order soup. I guess the tradition is to eat soup and burn fake money on the last day of the New Year. The soup was delicious and I know exactly where the restaurant is located in case I have time to leave the complex again. Then Coach Bill took me to two more tourist attractions. People were praying and burning incense. I love the sightseeing.

Coach Bill dropped me off at my bike and asked where I was going. I told a little white lie…. I said I would go back, but I didn’t say when. Must have been lost in translation, I guess. I rode my borrowed bike for two hours and only got lost once!

I met Coach Bill in the lobby at 2:00. After picking up his son and meeting his wife at their house we took off (in his car) for the local mall. The Taiwan mall contains every type of store you can imagine all under one roof. Our first stop in the mall…Starbucks. Looked just the same as the one in Irvington. As I made my way through the mall I finally got to the grocery section. Since Kaohsiung sits next to the ocean you can imagine the fresh fish available. I saw more squid than beef or chicken on the coolers. I could tell Coach Bill favored the local flavor and made it his responsibility to introduce me their food. Before I could object Coach Bill handed me fried squid balls with sea salt on a stick. Wasn’t bad at all.

Our first destination was a building memorial dedicated to Chinese solders. The memorial was constructed the same year I was born in 1974. It sat on the top of a mountain overlooking most of the city. The view was spectacular. The memorial looked to be in traditional Chinese architecture but then outside of the gates was a more modern museum with pictures and documents explaining the history, struggles, and migration of the Chinese to Taiwan.

We ended the afternoon tour with hike through the mouth of a dragon and a tiger. Before we entered Coach Bill made me stick my hand in the mouth of a small dragon statue for good luck and touch the back of a turtle statue for long life. I also had to enter the mouth of the dragon first and leave through the mouth of the tiger. Don’t ask me why.

Next was dinner….

Coach Bill’s wife met us all at a restaurant owned by one of her friends in the heart of the city. As soon as we sat down we were greeted by the owner and a ton of food. There were no menus just samples of the dishes in the front window. Coach Bill must have ordered every dish! Once again I didn’t know what I was eating and Coach Bill wanted me to eat authentic Chinese cuisine. There were several plates scattered on the table and instead of each individual having their own plate we shared and sampled from all the different dishes with only our chopsticks. My favorite dish was the squid with ginger. At first I thought it was a vegetable. Only after did they tell me what I was eating.