Update from Coach Rusty – August 4, 2025

Coaches

I already know most of you, but for those who I have not met, my name is Rusty Eckstein (Amelia’s dad). I have been coaching Amelia’s teams, in some capacity, for about 12 or 13 seasons including spring, fall ball and 3 all star teams, most recently as the head coach of the 10U Blue Cats All Stars. As of right now, we have 2 assistant coaches, Nick Olsen (Lexi’s dad), who assisted me with this year’s all star team, and Mark Davis (Lucy’s dad) who assisted me with this Spring’s rec ball team.

Fall 2025

Our plan for this fall will be to practice twice a week for 2 hours each time. We have reserved Field 1 and the batting cage next to it for Mondays from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm and Saturday mornings from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm. The current plan is for our first practice to be Monday, August 18th as I would like to give the girls a little time to adjust to their new school schedules. Going forward, I will be updating practice times and sending messages via Gamechanger. So, please keep an eye on that as things tend to change. We would ask that the girls bring all their softball equipment with them to each practice as well as always wear proper softball pants. At some point, we should have practice jerseys to wear as well, but for now, a softball appropriate shirt will do. Please, do not let the girls forget to bring a full water bottle to stay hydrated.

This Fall, my hope would be for us to enter into 1 or 2 tournaments to get a feel for where our girls are and what we can work on prior to next Spring. In these fall tournaments, we will move the girls around to a number of different positions, playing both infield and outfield and giving them a chance to learn different aspects of the game.

Winter 2025/2026

When the temperatures begin to drop (sometime in November), we will move our practices inside for the winter. The days and times may change at that point to accommodate all the teams who will share the indoor facility.

We may try to find an indoor tournament or maybe a local team or two who we could scrimmage indoors over the winter. This will likely be limited to only a couple of times as the indoor tournaments or field rental for scrimmages can get pricey.

Spring/Summer 2026

Once the weather breaks and we can start getting back outside, our plan will be to participate in 6 or 7 tournaments going through the end of next July. I will do my best to keep the majority of these fairly local, within an hour or two, while hopefully scheduling at least one fun destination tournament that could potentially involve a hotel, pool and amusement park. As we get into some of these later tournaments, we may start to see girls begin to hone in a little more on specific positions in order to better position the girls to win games. That being said, I will always do my best to move these girls around and get girls playing time as long as it makes sense.

So, that is pretty much my rough plan of how the next year will look. There are, however, a few things we will need to address here fairly quickly. I know the question always comes up, “What do I need to get?” As a new team, very soon, we will be purchasing practice jerseys, equipment bags, pullovers and helmets. I will work with Mudsock to get you more information on how this process will work.

Volunteers/Sponsorship

We are also going to need a number of volunteers. Some things I can think of off the top of my head, we need someone to keep the book in Gamechanger as well as a backup person for this position. We will also need someone to keep a physical book as an alternative. Also, this type of program can cost a good deal of money, so it would be helpful to get corporate sponsorship and potentially do fundraisers. I would first say reach out to employers of parents to ask for sponsorship and see how much we can cover. Then, we can look at potential fundraisers or, if necessary, just paying more money to the team to cover costs.