This page outlines the core values of our softball program. It is important that you feel comfortable with our approach while participating on our Valley Stompers team.
Our focus will be to pursue our team goals as they relate to the greater whole. The underlying premise of our philosophy is that the whole is greater than the sum of all the individual parts. While it is only natural for parents to focus on their player, our plan is that the coaches and players will focus on the team as a whole. We will stress the values of teamwork (both on and off the field), softball competitiveness, and fundamental skill development that will enable our team to compete at higher level.
To ensure an enjoyable and productive experience for everyone, we require that all parents become stewards of the Valley Stomper culture by adopting and abiding by our core principles. These foundational values of the Valley Stomper organization and provides the doctrine that all families in the program are expected to abide by.
Program Approach
Our program is designed to contribute to the development of positive, confident, respectful, and hard working young adults that will be able to understand to correlation between effort and reward. Our medium is softball and we will use softball to achieve that objective. We will teach our players the fundamental skills and advanced strategy that defines a higher-level softball program. While we believe the competitive nature of our program accelerates a player’s development, the competitive element can become destructive if our parents and players lose sight of the basic purpose of our program; to teach the game of softball within the context of real world life lessons. Our basic theory is that teaching the game inherently promotes “on-field success”. We do not believe that “on-field success” inherently promotes teaching.
By participating in our program, our players will develop the physical, mental, and emotional skills to play the game at the next level. While we believe that winning is important, we will never measure a season by wins and losses. Winning at any cost does not represent the primary goal of our program. Our basic belief is that it is more important to teach and develop than to win. Keep in mind that this should not be misinterpreted as any less of a commitment to winning, however, we are much more concerned about our player’s development than the number of tournaments we win.
We will focus on skills development and the importance of consistency. We will emphasize our expectation of putting forth a complete effort rather than the results from that effort. In return for that complete effort, we will coach and teach at a higher level, support our girls as they grow to young adults and treat each player with respect. We will hold each player accountable within the context of effort, focus, and respect for the program and their teammates. We expect that physical mistakes will happen but we will not enable repeated mental mistakes. We will promote the triangle of respect. One side of the triangle being respect for peers, the other side of the triangle being respect for authorities, and the base or foundation of the triangle being respect for yourself.
