UVA_SBDad

I could not care less if you or anyone else here believes they know who I am and I have no clue, nor do I care, who you are. I posted a while ago on Sabre that it wouldn’t be too difficult to figure out who I am if somebody was obsessed with me enough to read through all of my Sabre posts, which you and possibly other TSL posters clearly are. Some posters, such as VT_AD, freely identify who they are here and on Sabre because they chose to while others like me do not. I know with 99.99% certainty who Techdady’s kid is, and therefore him, but it would never occur to me to out him here or on Sabre. First of all, doing so would be a flat-out, textbook b**** move, but it’s mainly because if his kid is who I believe her to be, I have been a huge fan of hers since I first saw her play in HS/travel ball and knew back then she had the talent to have the great college career she ended up having. I decided not to identify myself because I consider myself a parent fan and didn’t want to be perceived as the kind of parent who flexes over his kid on the internet. I could not be prouder of my daughter’s softball accomplishments at every level, both in what she achieved and how she did it. Unlike so many travel ball princesses growing up, she never felt that she was too good to play for anyone at any level (biggest reason she ended up @ UVA) and has earned the respect by all she’s received. If you, the mod, and other posters here don’t think it’s out of line for anybody other than the poster themselves to identify who they are on a message board, then there’s even less hope for you all than I thought. PS- to everyone who wants me to never post here again, don't post about me here and I'll gladly oblige. How hard can it be to figure that out? Geez.

I thought nobody here went to "le sewer" to see what anyone was posting. I guess some of you are following me now and I can't say I blame you since I routinely scoop your "journalist", Cheerleader Chip, with minimal effort and posts on such relevant VT SB topics as, "Where's Gillis?", "How long is the double-secret, didn't-want-to-talk-about, contract extension Pete signed?", and "other than Lemley, your only experienced returning pitchers are in the portal". I'm tired of it and haven't discussed the VT/Knight recruitment in a long time, and only get baited into it occasionally when I hear chatter, online and off, within UVA circles of how we should emulate VT and hire our own version of coach Pete, hence the above quote. I'll try to refrain from such topics knowing the fodder it will stir up here and for the record, I never expected anyone here to demand the firing of your then newly hired SB coach or for anyone to stop supporting the team. I just thought maybe more than one or two posters would call out the classlessness of PD for what it was and move on. My favorite defense of his actions was Techdady's (still posting here?) "who farted?" defense, which was that it was some unnamed bureaucrat in the AD's office that strung the kid along and told her she was still in, not Pete. Not only was it flat out BS contradicted by the kid's own father, but a complete dodge of accountability if somebody said that to TD & his kid when they were being recruited here. ST may not have been the greatest coach but at least he was a classy guy. Happy 4th of July TSL!

Whatever I've posted in the past about the character of anyone on your team's coaching staff, I don't think for a second that the event or events that caused Gillis's departure would rise to the level of scandalous, but I also don't think he's coming back. The fact that nothing is out there yet also leads me to believe that the most likely possibility is that this doesn't involve the AD at all and is more likely a internal issue between Pete and Doug. What is also plausible about this, as something like this happened in the past when Pete & Doug were together at Missouri, is that Doug's style of player motivational speaking is something that wouldn't raise an eyebrow in the world of men's FP but would in the world of women's college softball. If Pete decided to let Doug go or if Doug decided to leave, Pete either thinks he can get someone in to replace him fairly soon or he feels he can get by for the rest of this year and have someone lined up to hire right after the season ends so he doesn't lose players to the portal and HS recruits decommit. Pete would probably want someone to replace Doug who has high P5 pitching coaching experience, pitched men's FP softball, isn't currently employed by another university so no buyout is involved and could relocate to Blacksburg fairly quickly and easily. That sounds like a very tall ask but there is one candidate who fits that description, Rick Pauly. If Pete is able to run the gauntlet and pull off this kind of PC switcheroo without disruption to current players or recruits I will come back here and tip my cap to him.

...but knowing how well this team's parents and fans travel I thought someone who was in Wilmington last week would blast me with angry facts and maybe even pics to back it up by now. That's ok, I'll wait.

Some anonymous poster (not me) posted the linked thread on robocoach last weekend. Knowing how much you all like hearing from me, I searched this board first to see if the topic of Gillis's presence (or lack thereof) was discussed here, which it wasn't. There was a photo posted of the team meeting with the coaches just beyond the bleachers at the end of the weekend and Gillis was notably absent, but he may have just needed a bio break at the time the pic was taken. So the questions I'll throw out there are the following: 1. Was Doug Gillis with the team last weekend in NC? If not, was any reason given for his absence? 2. Will Coach Gillis return to the team this weekend in Clearwater? 3. Is it known when, or if, coach Gillis will return to the team? That is all.

So you don't know anything about some of the best pitchers in the game who played as recently as two years ago, boldly proclaim that our coaches have produced ZERO All Americans, and when confronted with FACTS that contradict your limited softball worldview you lamely post that you know very little about the softball world outside of your own backyard in the ACC & SEC. Oh, and on top of that you say that all the experienced pitchers in the portal, outside of the two you mentioned, are worse than the fresh out of HS recruits you have coming in next year. I'm glad I'm not the parent of one of those pitchers coming into this kind of fan base expectation. All you've got to fall back on is this pathetic "troll" insult. May I remind not only you but everyone else here that likes to call me a troll that TSL posters started and engaged in lengthy threads on this board attacking me personally for my posts on Sabre. One of them had nothing to do with VT softball but was about an exchange I had with a disgruntled parent of a former UVA player. The other one, which was about VT SB and as a topic was fair game when talking about a rival, was critical of Pete's scheduling a week in Florida in April which I posted at the time risked burning your team out. If you all were honest with yourselves you'd admit I was dead-on right about that one but I hope you do schedule the same way next year before playing us. My LI & PW works just as well on this sportswar site as it does on Sabre so suit yourselves as I am unfazed by your cheap insults and have no problem defending myself. Even though I think several posters hang on all my posts I'll most likely get board of interacting with empty calorie, cheap "like" getting posters such as yourself here anyway. I don't reply to a lot of posts here just because there are too many rabbit holes to go down with them.

Here is the quote in question, 'I struggled my freshman year and there was nobody here that could help me.' That quote could mean anything from not having the coaching she felt like she needed to develop, having too much pressure on her to pitch well (doubtful w/Eberle & Dail there) or even struggling to get more innings pitched (more likely). It could have even been personal and had little to nothing to do with softball. While she may have mean it as an endorsement of Gillis I doubt she meant it as a dis on Tincher or a teammate. The only point I made when the poster posted that is that it sounds like a dis of a former Hokie, take your pick of who it was.

It's all right there in the first two paragraphs of his UVA coach's bio. He developed Kleist from her travel ball days. I bet Pete did reach out to the Bowling Green pitcher but she ended up transferring to Tennessee. He probably contacted Morgan Scott of UNC Greensboro too but nope, she's heading to Oregon. Never change Techdaddy, you're buffoonery on this board always makes my day. Edit to add: Yet another thing you are wrong on, we did beat the BG pitcher in the NISC. Her line was 4 hits, 4 ER's in the loss. Nice try though. ** Edited by UVA_SBDad at 8/2/2022, 5:58:37 PM

I'm sure he didn't have any expectations about getting her but if he was interested in her than his standards are a lot lower than just Yanez & Kilfoyle. BTW- I didn't back off of anything, I just don't care about what anyone said or didn't say when the facts directly contradict it. What is it with reading comprehension among certain posters on this site? ** Edited by UVA_SBDad at 8/2/2022, 4:03:54 PM ** Edited by UVA_SBDad at 8/2/2022, 4:04:34 PM

What I posted was that the notion that Keely was all alone and had no help as a freshman is ridiculous because she had Eberle here to pitch most of the innings and Dail to split the remaining innings with (both had more IP in '18). She also had Tincher as the PC who recruited her and since leaving here has been heavily involved with the family's very successful pitching instruction business, but go ahead and dismiss that too. I don't care if Keely actually said that she had no help as a freshman, athletes frequently say things to the media that are misunderstood or taken out of context, but the fact that she pitched 20% of the total IP's for VT as a freshman says otherwise. Not surprising that a TSL poster would try to flame me for something I didn't post though. What Keely thinks of Gillis as a pitching coach is of no consequence at this point as she's used up all her eligibility and graduated. Where are all the experienced, quality pitchers in the portal that are knocking on Pete & Gillis door and begging to come here? I have it on good authority that Pete's looking for experienced pitchers in the portal but has no takers to date.

Not to mention that Dail was around to split innings with Keely when Eberle wasn't pitching, which was most of the time. I know you all love to hate me here but outside of my criticism of your coach, which has been well documented and deserved, I have always been very supportive of your players on here or Sabre. I've noticed a trend among some posters on this board. If a player leaves via the portal it's automatically because they "weren't good enough". I didn't post a thing about your coach when I posted about Mac & Ivy going into the portal and your cheerleader chimes in about how they were going automatically going to the bottom of the depth chart to make way for sight unseen freshmen. Techdaddio is now ready to throw Eberle and Tinch (as a PC, if not a player) under the bus as well. Whatever else was going wrong with your program during the end of Thomas's run, recruiting quality pitchers wasn't one of them. I don't know where you pulled that Keely quote from but since you didn't link it to anything or put it into any kind of context, I'll take it with a huge grain of salt.

Weak comparison. Out of state cost is $20k more for every player on the SB roster.

Look, the notion that I would expect you to think the sky is falling and turn on each other in classic TSL fashion (G2 of our series for example) over losing two pitchers with about 30 IP combined and ERA's around 5 is absolutely ridiculous. I know as well as you do that those two are better than this year's ERA's would suggest based on how they pitched last year with more IPs and when I noticed them listed on robocoach as in the portal and not being discussed here, I thought it should be brought up. Hence the word "discuss" in my op. If this were my team I would be a bit concerned about it, if not alarmed, but the consensus seems to be that they wanted more opportunity and they weren't likely to get it here because they'd be at the bottom of the pitching depth chart. Personally, I don't draw any conclusions about freshmen pitchers until I see them in game situations but you all seem pretty certain so good on ya. Edit to add: You posted that Pete recruited over these two pitchers but someone posted here an Extra Innings profile on Lemley which said she committed here in 8th grade. That would put her commitment at around 2016-17 during the Thomas coaching regime not the current one. Same with Rochard. Eventually you gotta recruit pitchers and not just inherit them. I'll give credit to Gilly for developing Rochard though. Were Mac & Ivy recruited by Thomas or Pete?

According to the link below (page 6 near bottom). Discuss.

Winning the ACC regular season crown in the last 2 seasons where covid wasn't a factor is an impressive accomplishment. Congrats to the Hokie players and coaches who made this possible.

In regard to our game vs Loserville today, I invite anyone to watch this game (after you're done celebrating of course) and then post here about how poorly our team is coached.

Did you notice the name just below Pete's on the linked doc before you wrote "you get what you pay for"?

This doesn't say anything about the terms of the extension for only 2 years from his original contract so given that Pete has all the leverage in his negotiations with Whit I'd speculate that you'll be lucky to keep him until the end of the '25 season. I know I haven't had much nice to say about your coach but I'll extend the olive branch to TSL SB board regulars by stating that he is a very talented college softball coach. I also think he's a very shrewd businessman.

edited for a typo.

[Post edited by UVA_SBDad at 04/25/2022 2:30PM]

Last page of linked BOV doc.

I noticed a couple of troll posts to my sabre thread so I thought it may have been brought up here. I had no idea you would dwell my postings there so much during a weekend when you’re on the verge of sweeping FSU. I’m not going to read and certainly won’t respond to everything posted here but I’ll clarify a few things.

No, I don’t wish for a second that my kid was playing for VT or a similarly ranked program. In addition to getting a world class education my kid gets to play occasionally and when she does at home she plays in one the sports must beautiful facilities. As far as the comparison between your mid-April schedule and our Feb non-con schedule, we always left Cville on either Thursday night or Friday morning and returned by Sunday, just like any ACC road series. We never have and never will take the team on the road for an entire week in April so close to final exams.

As far as the Abby Knight recruiting situation there is something uniquely despicable about your coach’s activities that even the “one sided” article and “these things happen during coaching changes” doesn’t reflect. If he cut her loose within a reasonable time frame of coming on board it’s a non-issue, but he kept her hanging on while recruiting for her replacement and when he got one in Banks he cut her loose when Knight’s options were limited in the late summer going into her senior year. I don’t care if Banks UW coaches were big meanies who didn’t treat her well (before she got there?) and Pete was a saint to her it doesn’t excuse his treatment of Knight. Most of you probably haven’t even read her father’s account of this episode on your own OS board, you don’t care because it wasn’t your daughter, granddaughter, or niece it happened to.

Your team this year is good enough to win it all but bat & ball sports are crapshoots with umpire calls, bad bounces and lucky breaks being the deciding factor among elite teams. I could not have more respect for your players who deal with the insane pressure you put on them to end your 0-fer natty quest, but did anyone notice that when FSU pulled within two Lonnie, who has a natty, didn’t put Sandercock back in the circle? Your coach not only has your ace throw 160 pitches in an extra inning win on Friday but also makes her the janitor who gets to clean up yesterday’s mess. To win a natty it doesn’t matter nearly as much where your team is in April nearly as it does in June.

Other than a few notable exceptions on this board who do question your coach’s character and get roasted by the homers for doing so, what you all don’t seem to realize is that you’re being set up to all be used and tossed aside by this guy. I noticed when the topic of coach’s extension gets brought up your top homer-in-chief said the AD told him it was a done deal but Pete didn’t want it announced. Why on earth would a coach not want it announced to his future recruits and fan base that he was going to be here for a long time?