What Kinds of Leaders Can You Find on the Softball Field?
One of the many things that make softball such a great sport to play is the fact that you’re part of a team working toward a common goal. Being one of 15 or 20 girls on a roster means you have the opportunity to come in contact with quite a few different kinds of personalities.
You may end up loving some of those personalities – with those girls becoming a few of your best friends – and you may not be so fond of others. However, having that common goal helps girls figure out how to put those differences aside for the good of the team. Your personality and the personalities of those you share a uniform with during any given season can help determine who emerges as a leader.
And even if you aren’t that prototypical leader that takes charge (and everyone knows it), you can lead in many other ways. It doesn’t really matter which team you look at – you’re bound to find one (or more) of these kinds of leaders in the dugout and on the field.
Vocal Leader
This is probably the leader that everyone is most familiar with because it’s hard not to hear them taking charge! In a game that encounters a lot of failure like softball does, it’s important to keep an entire team engaged when the momentum starts flowing in their direction.
So, that means keeping the chatter up in the dugout when you’re team is hitting or out in the field when you’re on defense. It’s easy to let your mind wander at certain points throughout any given game, but the vocal leader helps keep their squad focused during every single play from the first inning to the last.
Leading By Example
These leaders don’t like to say much of anything, but the way in which they carry themselves on and off the field is all their teammates need to see in order to follow suit. It takes a mentally strong and competitive person to have consistent success on the softball field.
That kind of attitude and “letting their game do the talking” has just as great of an impact on the rest of their team – if not more – than if they were one of the vocal leaders.
Even-Keel Leader
It doesn’t matter what the situation is – whether they’re winning by 10 or losing by 10 – this leader’s demeanor doesn’t change throughout the course of a game. Softball involves so many highs and lows during the course of a season that having a person with this kind of mentality is necessary for everyone else to stay grounded and not go crazy when something out of their control doesn’t go their way.
Positive Leader
While everyone knows who the vocal leader on a softball team is, it’s not as easy to see who the positive leaders are, but they’re vitally important toward keeping overall morale up as much as possible. As we just mentioned, there’s a lot of failure that goes on in softball – especially when we’re talking about hitting – so it can be easy for any particular player to get down on themselves if there’s a string of negative events that impact them.
The positive leader doesn’t make any grandiose gestures that everyone in the stands can see, but they know exactly what to say in order to help lift up their teammate and keep them focusing on what’s ahead instead of what’s behind.
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