Feb. 10, 2007
Notre Dame assistant coach Scott Lawler – who serves as the Irish hitting coach and recruiting coordinator – has stopped by und.com to provide an updated practice report. He will be followed throughout the week by the other members of the coaching staff, who will provide their own thoughts on preseason workouts as the opening game approaches.
Notre Dame Baseball 2007 Preseason Practice Report #1 – Scott Lawler (Feb. 10)
“Hello Notre Dame baseball fans,
“The Fighting Irish baseball season is under way! Our team has been practicing hard through the early stages of the preseason and we now have a glimmer of daylight ahead with the first official game next week in San Antonio. We have a young team with a lot of talent and they need to concentrate on the fundamentals before we go out and battle an opponent.
“The learning curve for the team is going as expected, as the team needed to learn coach Schrage’s style of play and any new plays that he put into the system that might be different from years past. The great thing about our team is that they are quick learners, and we do have some older guys who will lead our young team.
Mike Dury and Dan Dressman (both senior captains) have been doing an outstanding job as leaders for our team, taking a young team and molding them for the coming season. As a coaching staff, we told our team that we need to battle through every day and get better every day at practice or in games. We don’t want to peak as a team next weekend in San Antonio – we want to peak during tournament time, and that takes patience from our staff and players.
“The success in practice at this point has to do with the older players like Mike and Dan taking charge and showing what needs to be done during practice to win a championship. A team just can’t skip the process of practice before the season and expect to win anything during the year.
“Another key component of our preseason practice is our conditioning and strength training. We have two secret weapons on our team and neither of them will play an inning for us: Mike Joseph, our strength coach, and Mike Bean, our athletic trainer for baseball. Mike Joseph gets them strong and quick for the year, and ‘Beaner’ keeps them healthy. We truly have an advantage over many schools nationwide, having both of those men with us for the preseason and season. I really believe our team will see a big difference in endurance, strength and quickness throughout the year because of both those men.
“Quicker and stronger players don’t always win all the time in the game of baseball, but great fundamentals will win games. The key to our early individual workout and early full-team practices has been working on fundamentals in all aspects of the game.
“Our guys are working hard at the drills, but they all want to get outside and play a game. Our staff’s goal is to make them as fundamentally sound as possible for the upcoming non-conference schedule. Players get better doing drills, but they get even better when they can take those skills and work them into a game. When we play the first couple of non-conference games, the coaching staff will be evaluating the fundamental skills of our players.
“Our goal as a team is to play the game hard and to not make mistakes. We as a team can control playing the game hard, thinking the game through, and not making mistakes. If we can eliminate defensive “freebies,” we will win the majority of our games this season. Freebies are walks, passed balls, stolen bases, errors, hit batters, and not keeping the double-play intact.
“On the other side of the fence (offensively), we want to create freebies for our offense – we want other teams to spend a lot of time preparing to stop our offense. You always want to be a team that is tough to play against!
“If we can pull all these elements together, I foresee us having a terrific season.
“Until next time, thanks for your support of Notre Dame baseball and Go Irish!”
– Coach Lawler