High school softball coaches like to test their teams early in the nonregion portion of the schedule, often scheduling several early tournaments to both gauge performance and work their teams into shape.
In Georgia, though, that practice comes with the knowledge that many of the players are fresh off summer softball seasons that are increasingly more demanding. Is it a good thing to have the players with so many games under their belts, or is there concern, especially with pitchers, that fatigue could lead to injury?
"It depends how much they threw all summer," Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe coach Tony Ellis said. "Most of their summer teams, if they're on a good one, have three pitchers, so they don't have to go all the time. It's tough sometimes when they go all the way through the ASA nationals and the grit and grind of that whole week.
"Coming straight into high school ball is sometimes hard on them. Fatigue is the biggest concern. Most have played since March, and it was a long, hot summer. They go from practicing two or three days a week to every day now, and with school starting and them having to get up earlier, fatigue can really set in."
Ellis, for the first time, did not keep his players together on a summer team, but he kept tabs on them, including ace pitchers Monica Vickery and Maddie Bray. Heritage coach Steve Chattin, on the other hand, had the luxury of most of his players staying together on a team. He knows, coming into the season, where his girls stand physically and he prefers getting them straight from their summer action.
"Each coach varies on that, but we kind of like it," Chattin said. "We have run our summer select program, and 75 percent of our kids are playing together. That benefits us. When we come into the season we should be as prepared as anybody because we have a good idea of where they are.
"We try to balance what they do. I think it's more of a mindset than anything. I'm not saying they can't get burned out or fatigued, but I think it's more of a mindset that gets developed by parents and friends more than it is. It's like (national champion football coach) Nick Saban says: You are what you think you are and what you believe. If you start thinking you're fatigued, you will be."