Exercises to improve confidence left Higher Ground campers believing they were the cat’s pajamas Tuesday

TIFTON — A stranger wandering past E.B. Hamilton’s ball fields might have been a bit confused Tuesday morning.

Higher Ground’s softball camp was in session, but instead of throwing balls or swinging bats, a group of participants were barking, then suddenly mewing. The activity, albeit strange on the surface, was part of leader Bobby Simpson’s efforts to get his charges to pay attention to their mindset.

The dog and cat exercise, along with another where players had to suddenly change from sad to excited, was one of Simpson’s ways of getting them to focus once they stepped into the batter’s box.

“You can change from who you are to who you need to be,” he said.

Simpson, recently announced as a 2018 inductee into Tift County’s Athletic Hall of Fame, had a number of pointers about mindset.

Drawing a rudimentary batter’s box in the dirt, he told to “Learn to respect this place right here.”

A player can be scared outside the box, he said. Once inside, the thought process needs to change from scared to sensational.

Simpson said players often emphasized physical techniques in camps. He equally emphasizes other aspects. One of the trademarks of Higher Ground is the focus on “MVP instruction” — mental, visual and physical skills. Baserunning and infield and outfield drills were also covered over the two days of camp.

Assistants Bobby Fresh and Nancy Anderson Mark had part of the group.

All three have extensive backgrounds in the sport. Mark won five state softball championships with Tift County High. Fresh assisted with those teams and has been a longtime aide with Higher Ground. Simpson’s work has been national and international, from local teams to the Olympics.

Fresh and Mark were working on team skills and in Mark’s case, catching. One of Mark’s drills for the youngest players was a version of keep away where players encircled another, rolling balls to those on the perimeter. If the middle person snared one of these tosses, the thrower became the one in the middle.

Simpson described the drills as “fun, but it has a purpose.”

“There are three different parts of hitting,” he said, the use of the body, the eyes and the brain.

What happens when you go to bat, Simpson said, starts a physical process. The ball leaves the hand of the pitcher, the batter studies the pitch. The batter figures out what the pitch is and what it means, then she will decide what to do. At that point, it switches from visual to physical.

As Simpson stressed to players to become what they needed to be while hitting, he had them get closer with the batter’s box. Label the line you step across, he said.

One player said her line was a hippopotamus. Simpson asked another to describe her line.

“Jimmy,” she said.