Sammy is an up and coming freshman pitcher. She has already made varsity and has earned the starting position on her team. Her dream is to play D1 college softball preferably at Oklahoma. She is a very dominant pitcher but struggles with self confidence and bouncing back from having a home run hit off of her. She needs help setting goals to reach her dreams and become a stringer athlete.

Short Term Goals:

• Pitch for AT LEAST 40 minutes every day. She needs to make sure she efficiently throws any pitch she can throw for an effective strike 10 times each.
• Although she is in great shape there is always ways of getting stronger and healthier. Sammy runs an 8:15 mile but her goal is to run a 7:45 mile. To achieve the she needs to run a mile 3 times a week. She tries to increase her mile time by at least 8 seconds each time she runs.
• Developing Sammy's core will help her stamina and help her throw the ball much faster. A core workout should be implemented into her daily workout every day. She should be doing 5 sets of 10 sit-ups, bicycles, and V sit-ups before she goes to bed or whenever else she gets the chance.
• Sammy doesn't give up very many home runs, but every pitcher gives up some at times. She wants to try and get her home runs allowed for every 7 games to no more than 2. She will need to work on keeping the ball low and limit the amount of pitches she accidentally hangs over the plate.
• A goal of Sammy's is to also work on limited the amount of bad foods she puts into her body. She decides to only drink 4 sodas per week. She drinks water with every other meal.
• Sammy wants to get her bench press up to 120 pounds. Every day she is going to do 5 sets of 10 increasing weight by 2.5 to 5 pounds a day.
• She needs to keep her arm healthy so she is going to make sure she does her arm stretches every time she even decides to pick up a ball.
• She needs to keep her GPA high at all times. She decides to set out an hour of study time every day that she has something she ctan study.

Long Term Goals

• Play softball in college at a D1 level.
• Maintain a 97 GPA throughout high school.
• Win state at some point in high school.
• Get her fastball up to 68 mph

Sources of Motivation

• Intrinsic- wanting to workout and eat healthy to help herself feel better about herself and to have better self confidence.
• Extrinsic- For every strikeout, her dad will pay her 2 dollars. If her team wins state, her parents will get her a new puppy of her choice.

Imagery

• Before each pitch imagine it being effective and thrown as a strike.
• She needs to imagine herself being bigger than the batter. Imagine the batter being nervous to hit against her. This will help her mound presence.

Simulation

• Practice working from being behind in the count. Have a batter stand in the box and imagine it's a 3-0 count. Throw her hardest pitches and try to work back and strike the batter out.

Sources of Stress

• Her parents
• Home games
• Self image problems
• Losing games/ getting pulled out of games
• Being tired from school (balancing homework, family, and softball)

Stress Management

• Writing on notecards statements of encouragement and before every game reading them for reassurance.
• Breathing exercises. Whenever feeling stressed, breathe in for 5 seconds and out for 3. Repeat until feeling better. Also, before every pitch breathe.
• Get a lot of sleep. At least 8 or so hours a night.