[Steve M]

Chuck,
With you hearing that your strike zone is too narrow - the plate is 17" wide, with a 3/4" black band around it. The ball is 3 & 1/2 inches in diameter. Give them the black - especially in a JV game - you need every strike you can get there. If any part of the ball hits any part of the strike zone, call it. That means that your effective strike zone is about 27" wide.

ASA is the biggest softball sanctioning body in the world and most of the other sanctioning bodies' rules are somewhat based on ASA rules. Up until a few years ago when they started putting together their own book, NCAA used the ASA rule book and listed their few alterations inside the front cover. Over the past few years, the NCAA, NFHS, and ASA have decided to try to move their rules closer to being a single set of rules. Each has a representative and the rules committee meetings of the others. Some of the NFHS changes this year are to bring the NFHS rules in line with ASA's.

NFHS made my section rep responsible for putting together a summary of the rule differences between NFHS and ASA. When I made a very similar suggestion to him that such a booklet would be really useful, I ended up with that task. It's done, for all intents & purposes, with several minor changes having been made by the Fed and then by me. Right now, I again waiting for "final" approval from the Fed. They will distribute it via state organizations - it seems my name won't even be on it's cover, oh well I can live with that. There is also a summary that ASA puts out each year - I have no idea why NFHS did not just use that instead of putting together their own. I just found out a few months ago that ASA has been doing that for years.

You'll find that each pitcher is different and it may take several pitches for you to pick up her delivery motion. Wait as long as you can before dropping into your set position, but be completely set and still when the pitcher releases the ball. You don't want to track a moving target(the ball) from a moving base (you).

I usually give the count after the 3rd pitch and then every other pitch after that. I may give it after 2 pitches if they were strikes.

Like someone already said - welcome to this branch of the insane.