Inside the Circle with Coach Pat

How to be a coachable softball player comes down to three things three-time Olympic gold medalist Leah O'Brien-Amico lived at every level: take the correction, make the adjustment, and bounce back fast after a mistake. Most young players want to look perfect in front of their coaches. Leah says the ones who rise are the ones willing to get out of their comfort zone. If your daughter just got moved to a new position at fall tryouts, is sitting more than she expected, or tightens up every time a coach tries to change her swing, this episode gives you...

A softball recruiting advocate for parents is someone who turns a coach's interest into a real plan instead of a guess, and Cheri Naudin has built an entire company around doing exactly that. If you're posting highlight videos, tagging four hundred coaches, and still hearing nothing back, the problem probably isn't your daughter's talent, it's the strategy. Every summer, travel softball families spend thousands of dollars on camps and showcases chasing a dream school that was never actually recruiting at their level, while the programs that do want them get overlooked completely.

In this episode of Inside...

A softball recruiting app for parents like APS Recruits exists because the college recruiting process for travel softball families has quietly become an unpaid second job. Between tracking emails, uploading video, and guessing which college coaches are actually watching, parents end up buried in spreadsheets and login screens before their daughter ever steps on a showcase field. Coach Pat sits down with Tiffany Worthy Deering, a 2005 NCAA National Champion at the University of Michigan and now President of APS Recruits, to break down what actually gets a travel softball player noticed and why so much recruiting advice misses the...

Michele Smith is a two time Olympic softball gold medalist, ESPN's lead college softball analyst, and one of the loudest voices in the fight for equal opportunity under Title IX.

If you are a softball parent watching your daughter's team practice on a shared field while other sports get brand new stadiums, this conversation explains why that funding gap still exists and what Michele believes softball communities need to ask for next.

Coach Pat, a 20 year travel softball coach and founder of Coach Pat Fastpitch Academy, sits down with Michele to trace her path from...

Travel softball for parents means finding guests who have lived every version of this journey, and Dr. Dot Richardson has lived nearly all of them. Rejected for being a girl, told to cut her hair and go by the name Bob just to play Little League, she still became the youngest player in women's major fastpitch softball history at age 13. If you're a travel softball parent watching your own kid face rejection, an odd age cutoff, or a rough stretch of strikeouts, Dot's path is proof the setback is rarely the whole story.

Coach Pat, a 20 year...

Travel softball for parents raises one of the toughest questions in the sport: how do college coaches actually decide who gets recruited?

On Inside the Circle with Coach Pat, University of Montana head softball coach Stef Ewing pulls back the curtain on the college softball recruiting process, from reading a tournament schedule the right way to understanding why rosters are expanding under the NCAA's new five-for-five eligibility rule. If you have ever wondered why one player gets seen at a showcase and another gets missed, this conversation breaks down exactly what recruiters are watching for and when. <...

Softball team culture is the real reason a mid-major program keeps beating Power Four schools, and in this episode of Inside the Circle, Coach Pat sits down with Rick Fremin, head coach at Southeastern Louisiana University, to find out exactly how he built it.

In five years, Rick took a program with only four winning seasons in over three decades to back to back NCAA tournament appearances, a first ever regular season conference title, and the school's first at-large NCAA bid in 23 years.

Rick breaks down the lion, chameleon, turtle, and bull framework he uses...

Travel softball recruiting advice from someone who has sent 529 players to college ball starts right here.

In this episode of Inside the Circle, Coach Pat sits down with Bill Conroy, founder of the Beverly Bandits and the original Chicago Bandits professional team, who has spent over 30 years guiding families through camps, showcases, and the recruiting process.

Bill breaks down why one smart camp choice can save a family thousands of dollars, how the new five for five rule and transfer portal are reshaping college rosters, and why he caps parent coaches at three years max...

Youth softball coaching tips from a legend anchor this episode of Inside the Circle.

Coach Pat sits down with Mike Candrea, the winningest coach in NCAA softball history, who spent 37 years building the University of Arizona program into eight national championships and two Olympic medals.

If you're a parent or coach trying to figure out what actually helps a young athlete grow, this conversation is for you. Coach Candrea and Coach Pat dig into team culture, why recruiting a family matters as much as recruiting a player, and why he learned to coach the person...

Travel softball for parents often starts with a pretty pink bat, a matching helmet, and a hit that lands on grandma's Facebook. It rarely stays that simple.

In this solo episode of Inside the Circle, Coach Pat, a youth and travel fastpitch coach with over 20 years of experience and a strong track record of college placements, lays out the three things every parent of a 14U and under athlete needs to hear before the confusion, the politics, and the pressure set in.

Coach Pat walks through what he wishes he'd known in year one, what...

Youth sports can be one of the greatest experiences of your family's life. It can also be one of the most overwhelming.

Between the recruiting pressure, the tournament schedules, the team drama, and the constant noise about what your kid should be doing next, it's easy to lose sight of why you started in the first place. Inside the Circle with Coach Pat cuts through all of it.

Coach Pat is a youth and travel softball coach with over 20 years of experience and a track record of helping dozens of athletes reach college softball. Known...