Excerpt of my email to Chris Del Conte (I've only left in pertinent parts):
I have many issues to write you about, but in this email I'd just like to focus on softball. The softball
team really needs a review from your perspective. Chris Plonsky is too emotionally invested in the
program to look at the situation realistically.
When I look at the sports programs at UT, I consider three factors:
1) recruiting
2) player development
3) in-game coaching
Recruiting
There was a time where Connie Clark recruited outstanding players. These days, the best
Texas players are headed elsewhere. You just have to look at the current squad to see it
plainly. Texas softball has 6 (!) pitchers on the roster. It's common for a team to have 3,
maybe on a rare occasion, 4 pitchers on staff. Last year Connie had 5 pitchers for the first
time ever. We lose 3 pitchers after this year and we gain 2 pitchers next year, so we will
be back to 5 pitchers.
What does this tell you? This indicates that she's crossing her fingers and praying that
one of those 5 or 6 pitchers will be THE transcendent player that will lift her team for 3-4
years. I know that TCU has no softball team, so you may not have had to analyze a softball
team for a while. But really successful softball teams have a 1A pitcher and the ones
that make it to the College World Series have a 1b as well.
You only have to look at Oklahoma. They have had superior pitching for many years - enough
that they've won multiple NCAA championships in the last 10 years. Two years ago, they
found a freshman pitcher that was phenomenal. Then last year, they found an even BETTER
pitcher that regulated their start pitcher to second-best. Connie is struggling to guess which
of her 6 pitchers is the ONE, and to be honest they're good but superior.
One damning statement from Connie years ago was that she won't keep recruiting a player
that has verbally committed to another school. She said that she's had it done to her
and that she won't do it to another coach. That shows a lack of competitiveness that others,
notably OU and Baylor do not subscribe to.
Player Development
I've had season tickets for many years now. As I mentioned earlier, the beauty of women's sports
is you can see their development. Through the years, I've seen players have surprising freshman or
sophmore years never to live up to those breakout years. In fact, it's downright depressing to
see some freshman come in and become a surprise homerun or RBI hitter to get worse and worse
over the their remaining years.
Players in high school and can see this deterioration as well and are not inclined to come play for
Texas. I think Connie has realized this and has tried changing her coaches, but it's only gotten worse.
She's a bad evaluator and boss of the coaches that are supposed to be helping improve our players.
In-game coaching
I think this is really what Connie lives for. Speaking to others who know more about the inner
workings of the program, they call her a "CEO" coach. She doesn't deal with the day-to-day
coaching and training but seems to only live for game day coaching decisions. I've seen many,
many games literally tossed away because she's stubborn and won't make a change when the
game is on the line. To be blunt, the game has passed her by. She hasn't adjusted to what other
teams are doing and we lose winnable games.
I'm attaching a chart I've made of the last 10 years. In each year, we do play in an NCAA Regional
and in 9 out of the 10 years we lose in the Regional.
[Inserted graph of Connie's record for the last 10 years]
It used to be the case where we were always chasing OU and every 1 out of 4 years we'd catch them
and be Big 12 champs. Now, Baylor has surpassed Texas and we're chasing Baylor!
Chris Plonsky will never fire Connie because she did build the program from the ground up, literally.
And maybe that's the problem.
[I sent the email and forgot a key part - so I had to send a second part email]
Sorry, I sent the email too quickly. Last year, I received the softball ticket renewal application. I sighed
and sat on it for a week and then decided, "Okay, why not" and renewed.
Since we've started getting softball season ticket holders, we've seen probably.....5 sets of season
ticket holders around us give up their tickets. I know of 2 more that will be giving up theirs next year.
And sadly, I'm not going to renew next year. In the past, our section would be full of Longhorn burnt
orange. As time has gone on, and ticket holders have lost faith in the program, anyone can get
these prime seats meant for longtime ticket holders or Foundation members (of which I'm one).
And the most annoying thing? Being surrounded by opposing fans IN OUR OWN SECTION
on game day since they just buy these great seats that are open.
One more annoying factor is the awful scheduling. I wrote Plonsky about this one one of
her replies was that LHN contract requires X-many games to be shown. One game interfered
with a fashion show to be shown on LHN, so they moved the game time up! So, it's better
to broadcast a game in an empty stadium!
I'm giving up my season tickets and then just purchasing games we can actually attend.
Last year the games were at:
UTSA @ 4:00 pm on 3/08
McNeese State @ 4:00 pm on 3/22
Texas Southern @ 5:00 on 4/19
Why bother when I can record in on LHN?
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