Tag: kickball

One of my personal favorite things the past few years has been playing kickball in the SJSL. It’s made my Tuesday nights a lot of fun and something I always look forward to (barring the tearing of elbow ligaments of course).

This season we had a lot of new faces to the team, as well as the most players we’ve ever had to manage on a roster. This would prove to be a challenge, especially early on in the season. It’s difficult to ease in so many new faces while also keeping the veterans happy that we are fielding a competitive team as well.

I have to admit that at the end of week 3 I was a bit concerned. Many of our vetereans were concerned that we weren’t the same team that we had been in the past, and I was starting to believe that as well. I had confidence that we could figure out a way to maximize everyone’s talent and field a strong team that was still having fun as well.

Having 14 people on a roster made it very difficult for everyone to get comfortable as there was constant rotations and we weren’t getting many at bats, some games I only got 2! So first I worked on finding fielding combinations that could maximize our existing talent and slowly ease in our new people without putting too much pressure on them to perform. In time we found a couple of combinations that did work, and they really worked mostly because of the unselfishness of our players in being willing to sit more than they’d like to let a teammate get a shot at playing too.

Over the past few weeks we have been an elite fielding team and it’s great to being back at that level.

Our batting order was pretty tough to figure out too. I really wanted to bunch our better kickers as much as possible at the top, especially since we weren’t getting many at bats any more. This was easy to figure out, but that left a big void in the bottom of our lineup.

I tried to mix up some speed in the bottom and hope that our new girls could keep the ball on the ground and an aggressive base runner could take advantage and pretty much execute hit and runs all the time. For a couple of weeks it was looking like no run production would be had from the bottom, but at the end of the season it finally clicked and the hit and run approach at the bottom began to pay off in a big way.

While this hasn’t been the easiest team to manage and win with in kickball, figuring it out and getting it to work has been very rewarding. We have finished the regular season with a very impressive 6-2 record and were in every game we played in. More importantly we found ways to win the close ones and really ran the bases well as a team (to the frustration of other teams at times).

A great regular season with a great bunch of players, and looking forward to the playoffs next week.

The Honey Badgers would be facing off with against the reigning SJSL champs Kick Tease. I believe they’ve won every SJSL title to date, including dodgeball. They’re extremely athletic and have give the Badgers the most fits in the past.

All week I tried to think of strategies that could possibly be employed to give us a shot. I didn’t think that we could do anything too different to stop their outstanding guy kickers, but if we could keep their girls off base it would cut down on the damage and hopefully we could hang around long enough to somehow pull out a win.

To deal with the girls we employed 3 different defensive formations (I know this is a bit much for kickball). We would shift based upon whom was kicking. The goal was to take away the girls short kicks and force them to attempt to kick up the middle of the diamond where we’d have 3 guys in the infield and move one of our girls to the outfield.

I printed out diagrams and briefed everyone before the game on what we were going to attempt to do. Everyone bought in and was ready to execute.

Our first three hitter lead off with hits and Julie knocked in a run. Then Dustin and Irena knocked in a few more for good measure. It was paramount that we scored early, and boy did the Honey Badgers come through. With 3 early runs on the board it would put some pressure on the opponent.

We continued our constant shifting in the field, and had our finest hour in the field. Play after play was made. It was like a kickball machine out there with everyone in place and backing up one another. I was so proud to watch. Julie made such a big catch down the 3rd base line to save some runs. She got in front of a bullet, and stayed with it and someone came up catching the ricochet off of her. It was a big time play.

By the 3rd inning with a 3-1 lead, I began to think that wow, this crazy plan is actually working!

The low scoring defensive battle would go quickly. I kept counting down how many outs were left for us to make in the game. Even though I couldn’t physically participate it was still pretty intense to be involved. Tempers even began to flair by the normally ice cool yellow team. Our plan was working.

Another standout play that summed up the Badgers efforts was made my Geoff in right field late in the game. With one of the more dangerous members of Kick Tease on first base, a blooper was kicked into right field falling in front of Geoff. Instead of casually getting the ball into the infield Geoff fired a laser to 2nd narrowly catching the base runner for a force out. This most likely save us yet another run in a very close game.

Top of the 7th in a 3-2 game with the top of our lineup coming up we all knew that we had to someone find a way to tack on more runs to give us some breathing room in the bottom of the 7th. The troops really came through knocking in 1 more run that inning to give us a 4-2 lead.

Bottom of the 7th, with a 2 run lead is by no means at all safe against Kick Tease. We stuck with our shifting and they were able to knock in a run still making it 4-3 with 2 outs in the inning with a runner on 2nd. With one of their quicker girls coming up to kick we shifted yet again and really pressed her to dare her to kick in the air. She put in on the ground in excellent placement but a perfect throw and catch from John K. to Sean sealed the deal.

The Honey Badgers in what would turn out to be their finest hour won the playoff game and would advance to the championship! I did request that we didn’t celebrate and immediately shake Kick Tease’s hands. They are a fantastic team and it wouldn’t be right to celebrate in the face of such a proud team.

Our next opponent on the night in the championship game would be the undefeated Terror Squad. Again, we got off to a terrific start knocking in a few runs and narrowly getting out of jams on defense as well. The game was tight with some amazing plays on both ends.

It was really intense and between innings we would joke with the other team of just how great a game was unfolding.

However, the bottom of the 6th inning with the sun setting was all Terror Squad. They found a way to knock in kick after kick and eventually run after run. The Honey Badgers just appeared to of run out of steam around this time to me and we just didn’t play our patented Honey Badger team defense. It was sad to watch it unfold, but Terror Squad just had our number that night.

While it was a true bummer to lose the championship game to Terror Squad that night, I will never forget the amazing team performance that the Honey Badger had in our earlier match.

The yellow team just seems to have our number. While we kept the game close for the first five innings, Kick Tease was just too much offense for us to handle the other day.

The first five innings were great. We were putting up lots of runs and playing some solid defense. John K. had two mammoth home runs in an amazing individual effort. And the top of our lineup was great.

But the bottom of the sixth inning Kick Tease awakened and had simply executed to perfection. They put up eight runs that inning, with blast after blast. It was a real bummer for us, but they were simple amazing that inning.

The Honey Badgers end the season with a franchise best 6-2 record, entering the playoffs eager for redemption.

Coming off our first loss of the season last week, we were really hoping to bounce back to our Honey Badger winning ways. Sadly our opponent the Ball Busterz had to forfeit their game against us, but the league found us some replacement players so that we could still play!

I tweaked our lineup just a little bit, leading off with John B. and dropping Dustin towards the middle of the order in hopes of scoring a few more runs. While I’m not sure if the changes made a difference, we definitely did score many, many more runs this week (22 I believe).

Everyone kicked extremely well, with almost everyone having a season best offensive performance. Honey Badgers of the Week John K. and Julie really stood out with big kick after big kick.

What was really great was seeing our offense kick intelligently. Moving base runners, kicking to right field and keeping the ball on the ground. It’s so important to contribute something ever if you get out if we want to win the tougher games.

At one point I ever had to ask Kevin not to advance past second base so that we could try some situational kicking out in what turned out to be an exhibition game.

Let’s hope the offensive trend continues as we move towards the end of our season.

It was the battle for first place with the two lone unbeaten teams battling. In our previous two encounters with the Terror Squad we had some amazing games with the Squad finding a way to walk away with the victory each time. The Badgers were really hoping to end that trend this week.

Bad news started when we found out Kevin would not be playing this week due to other plans. He’s a very valuable member of the team and does a great job of patrolling centerfield for us. To compound matters John B. who sustained a chest injury the previous week was wounded going into the game. He really wanted to play in this big game but as captain I ultimately decided to shut him down for fielding for the week to rest up but allowed him to kick if he could past the warm up tests.

Being a guy short, Lauren came through for us yet again in getting her brother Andrew to fill in. He did a great job for us, and we hardly missed a beat with his excellent play.

In the top of the first the Terror Squad got some runners on, but our excellent fielding got us out of the jam unscathed.  The Badgers would get off to a terrific start in the bottom of the first knocking in three big early runs. Once again we scored early and often.

Unfortunately the Terror Squad would answer back with four runs of their own in the second with some excellent team kicking. The Badgers would soon answer back tying the game at four where things would remain for several innings. Both teams were fielding well as usual, perhaps the two most intelligent teams in the league.

The difference maker would come later in the game when with two outs the Terror Squad was able to knock in two runs to take the lead. We didn’t convert on any of our two out opportunities and they did. This would later prove to be the difference maker in the contest as the Terror Squad would go on to win seven to four.

Despite the loss there was some excellent plays made by the Honey Badgers. Elder statesman Geoff made some amazing catches in right field earning him Honey Badger of the Week honors.

Hopefully we’ll get another crack with them in the playoffs.

This would the first kickball game in 4 seasons that I’d have to sit out due to a recent serious elbow injury. While I was really bummed to not be playing, I knew that the Badgers still had plenty of firepower to win against a much revamped and improved Vicious and Delicious.

We got off to our now customary early start, up 3-0 after the first inning. This has been huge for us this season, as it really relaxes the team and we seem to focus better with the early cushion.

I was really impresse with our fielding once again. We play so well as a team, backing one another up and just plain old playing well together. Our situational kicking was really great as well, with our kicks advancing runners even when outs where made. I think we really took a step forward in that regard.

V & D were very tough and would soon tie things up. A competitive tension could be felt during the last few innings. There were some questionable bunt calls on both sides (a very gray area always), but in the end fair play did seem to prevail.

The Honey Badgers held on 6-4 to stay undefeated on the season! A very tough but exciting victory.