Become the player
coaches remember.

Player,

If you want to stop guessing whether you're actually getting better…

And you want a season where every lesson, every rep and every game actually adds up to something you can see…

Then keep reading.

Here's the story:

In case we haven't met, I'm Beth Keylon-Rawlston.

I pitched at the D1 level at Tennessee Tech, where I was named OVC Player of the Year and OVC Pitcher of the Year, and where I was chosen as Tennessee Tech's NCAA Woman of the Year. I've been inducted into five Halls of Fame. I was head coach of the 2012 NJCAA National Championship team and served as co-head coach of Team USA at the World University Games.

These days I run MyKZone Fastpitch Softball Academy in Ooltewah, Tennessee, with my husband Jimmy, a retired Airborne Army Ranger. Forty-four years in this game, and I still spend most of my week in the circle with players.

Which is how I noticed the problem.

I'd give a player something to work on. Good lesson. She'd nod, she'd get it, she'd leave fired up.

Two weeks later she'd come back and we'd start over. Not because she was lazy. Because nobody wrote it down. The lesson lived in her head for about four days and then travel ball ate it.

Meanwhile her parents are spending real money on lessons, tournaments, gas and hotels — and nobody in that family can tell you whether her exit velo moved an inch since March.

So I built the thing I wanted my own players to have.

The Complete
Softball Success Journal

It's 236 pages, and it covers one full year — all 52 weeks. It's not a notebook and it's not a planner. It's the season-long development system I use with my own athletes, laid out page by page so a player can run it herself.

It works for an 8U player learning to log her first practice, and it works for a high school junior building a recruiting file.

Here's what's inside:

• An athlete profile that sets real goals Eight areas — season, team, skill, academic, character and recruiting. Written down in week one, where she has to look at them all year.
• Baseline testing, retested every 13 weeks Speed, power, exit velo, arm speed, pop time. Same tests, same way, five times a year. The Change column doesn't care how you feel about it.
• 52 weekly spreads — four pages every week Plan the week and log practice. Get the reps in and write the numbers down. Compete and log the game. Then reflect on it honestly.
• Full game stats with season roll-ups Hitting, pitching, catching and defense, game by game — totalling up into AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS and ERA.
• A weekly mental game check-in Rate confidence, energy, focus and toughness 1–10. Champions are built between the ears, and this is where she trains that.
• A three-page recruiting tracker Schools of interest, camp tracker and a skills-metrics log. Recruiting rewards the organized.
• Twelve monthly reviews and a year-end report card Put Week 1 next to Week 52 and see, in her own handwriting, exactly how far she came.

Every weekly spread also carries a coaching tip from me — 52 of them, one for every week of the year, for players, parents and coaches.

— Beth