Softball: UL’s season of learning ends with biggest lesson of all

Kevin Foote, The Advertiser, May 21, 2018

A day later, UL softball coach Gerry Glasco said he still hadn’t looked at a replay.

On both Sunday and Monday press conferences, he tried his best to be restrained and say the right thing.

“I know it’s silly probably for a coach to think he saw something 60 feet away better than a person six feet away that’s trained to do the job,â€Â Glasco reiterated in Monday’s season-ending press luncheon. “I’m assuming I’m wrong. I haven’t seen the replay, but in my mind I was pretty sure I was right or I wouldn’t have gone out and argued in the first place.

“But I’m also a highly prejudiced individual. I hope the replay shows he’s right.â€Â
He wasn’t, coach. The baserunner was out.

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As you tried to explain to the umpire before being thrown out, the score should have been 1-1 going to the seventh.

But although the controversy will rage on in some minds for a long time, this weekend’s Baton Rouge Regional taught us way more than any lessons learned by the reactions to a botched call with the season on the line.

When the season began, we said it would be a learning process.

For one thing, we learned how competitive Glasco is. When we first met him, he kind of came off as the nice old uncle we’d all love to have.

And while that hasn’t really changed, we learned how intense his desire is to wi. On Sunday, we saw both of those sides in one statement.

“Anytime I lose, I’m not happy,” Glasco said. “They’re not paying me to get second. I hate second. It seems like we’ve been second in a lot of stuff this last month.

“I don’t want to say that losing is good enough, because it’s not. But my kids are good enough. I love those girls. They’ve been a big blessing to me.”
To see how angry Glasco was after Friday’s loss and how inspired his team played on Saturday was a great sign for the future.

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“Our team has to learn to trust me,” he said. “I think we can use that going into fall. A lot of things I thought was important going into February, they didn’t get. They didn’t understand.”

For example, the second-and-third steal play that was executed to perfection to put the Cajuns in position to beat LSU wasn’t botched several times earlier in the season.

“Early in February, they couldn’t fathom that play,” Glasco said. “We were getting thrown out at third and you should never, ever get thrown out on that play. Yesterday, now there’s not one person in that dugout that doesn’t understand why it was important.”
Moreover, Glasco said that multiple girls in his exit interviews commented this past weekend was the first time the 2018 Ragin’ Cajuns felt like one team.

“Sometimes you have to lose and fight together to get to that point where you have a teammate,” he said.

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So as frustrating as the Sunday’s loss was, the botched call didn’t produce a step backward for the program.

And if Glasco has any say in the matter, it could be used to improve the game in the future with instant replay.

“If they want to fix things, add instant replay,” Glasco said. “They’ve got instant replay in high school soccer. If I’m the NCAA Tournament, if I’m the NCAA Director, if I’m a rules committee member, I’m calling for instant replay, if I want the game to have ultimate amount of quality.”
The truth is, though, the blown call was one of many obstacles this team faced throughout the season.

Even above and beyond sifting through all the bitterness and resentment from an offseason where their former coach was fired, this team was handicapped in so many ways offensively.

They were coming from a completely opposite hitting philosophy without an offseason to teach the new method. At times, it was also like hitting with one hand behind their backs compared to the opposition.

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And still, this team managed a way to win 41 games and get to the sixth inning of the NCAA Regional final game tied.

“We’ve got to spent the fall, learning how to swing and make the ball jump off the bat,” Glasco said. “The sequence of the swing creates power.”
That power deficit reduced the Cajuns to 23 homers. For those of you who liked the team’s lack of power for whatever reason this season, don’t get used to it.

It drove Glasco crazy all season and he vows to change it. His goal is to be in the 50-60 home run range by next season.

“The sequence of the swing determines if you can wait on the change-up and hit balls with timing,” he said. “We didn’t get that. I just don’t believe you can teach all that in-season and I didn’t try.

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“From day one, we worked on hitting rise balls, we worked on hitting curve balls, we worked on hitting screw balls, we worked on change-ups, we worked on velocity, we worked on a lot of things, but we did not work on the sequence of the swing. When you open that can of worms, you can make a .400 out a .300 or a .200 out of a .300 a lot easier than you can go the other way.”
One season of learning is over. An offseason of working awaits.

“It’s going to be a long summer, but nothing can make you more determined,” Glasco said. “Nothing can spur me on more than the way the game ended.”