Welcome to the Heat

Heat in the South is just a fact of life. Yet to hear the news media talk about it, you'd think that this was the first year we ever had this type of heat in August. Looking back over my blog posts and photos from this time last year is very telling. I had my team practicing twice a week in 95+ temps, getting ready for the season. The heat was brutal but manageable. We kept water on the sidelines and took plenty of breaks.

The payoff from all that practice was huge. We ended up having a very successful season largely due to the hard work of each member of the team. I have had far more talented teams in the past but none that has worked harder.

This year, we are facing the same prospect with the heat and practice. I hope that these kids understand the value of hard work. We have a group that is very talented but they are also very rough at this point. If we work hard over the next few weeks, we'll have a good season. If we start to slack off and not practice, we'll suffer the consequences when tournament time rolls around.

I told our kids when we started training, "Games are won and lost on practice days." And also, "If you think that practice is painful, it's nothing like the pain of defeat when you know you were the better team and you just didn't work hard enough." The month of August will be a make or break time for us. In the fall we'll look back and say that's where we worked hard and earned our victories or that's where we slacked off and didn't prepare.