There's no crying in softball

[JefferMC]

Originally Posted by DaveASA/FED

So to those of you who said you have seen pitchers throwing 60+ you probably saw a gun that said she was....but it would be interesting to see what a high quality recently calibrated device would have registered that pitch at!

For my DD and the 60 MPH 11 year old, I know that the pitching coach callibrates his radar gun with a tuning fork daily. The gun is also mounted (inside a building) on a tripod next to a 10" high display for all the proud papas to see. The only sticking point I have is that he records the fastest pitch thrown in a liberal strike zone on a walk-up delivery (it's good for business). But over the past few years I've seen 6 HS age girls get to or above 60, with one as fast as 67. She was playing 14U at the time that went on the wall.

For the others, I don't have radar on them, but I do have timing. I time at least 5 pitches from the time it leaves their hand until it hits the catchers mitt (making sure I have a good angle on both :-). Factoring in the plate distance and subtracting the leap distance I get a speed accurate within an MPH or three. This is not a perfect science (due to human reaction times, etc), but I've compared with radar and been pretty dang close.