About/History
The reputation of the CASE Batbusters Organization comes from our commitment to the players and the belief that the organization exists for the players...not the coaches.
CASE Batbusters is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that was established in 1989 by Bob Wenk and Jim Dolan to help dedicated players improve their softball skills, develop character and earn college scholarships. After coaching girls youth softball for many years, Bob and Jim saw the Southern California travel ball world going in a new direction. They felt there was a better way to do things and founded the CASE Batbusters.
Jim Dolan helped to form the team and organization to be one of the most successful and well-known travel-ball organizations in the country. Jim Dolan retired from coaching several years ago and left the reins of the organization to Bob Wenk.
Prior to the official creation of the CASE Batbusters in 1989, Coach Wenk had been involved with youth softball for more than a decade. In 1984, Coach Wenk wrote Coaching Youth Softball (one of the first comprehensive books specifically designed for coaching girls fastpitch softball). While the game has changed tremendously since Coach Wenk wrote Coaching Youth Softball, and many techniques have changed, Coach Wenk's methods and philosophies regarding coaching girls fastpitch softball remain more relevant than ever. While the saying, "Boys need to play good to feel good; girls need to feel good to play good" is true to some extent, it is also true that players (now more than ever) need to learn to perform well even when they don't feel great. Some aspects of coaching change with the game, but some coaching principles are timeless...
Character and discipline are essential parts of playing for the CASE Batbusters Organization, but so are enjoying playing the game and competing at the highest level. Hundreds of players have earned college scholarships as a result of playing for the CASE Batbusters.
The National Fastpitch Coaches Association named CASE Batbusters head coach Jim Dolan, along with assistants Cliff Murphy, Bob Wenk and manager Dexter Porter as the 2003 NFCA Travel Ball Coaching Staff of the Year.
In 2011, Coach Wenk was honored by the NFCA as a member of the Easton Victory Club for his 1,800th career victory. Coach Wenk is also proud to say that he has coached four players that have gone on to play on the US Olympic Team and managed 6 National Championship teams.
After more than 30 years of dedicating himself to the development of young ladies through softball, Coach Wenk decided it was time to retire and spend time with his wife, children and grandchildren. In 2012, Scott Barker was handed the reins of the CASE Batbusters.
The climate, attitude and direction of Southern California travel softball has changed dramatically in recent years. Travel softball has become big business with some organizations having more than two hundred teams nationwide. Several Southern California organizations have 40, or more, teams in their organization. Players are required to attend specific hitting coaches, pitching coaches, training facilities and speed/agility programs. Many individuals are making a very lucrative living off of the dreams of girls to play softball in college and obtain a scholarship.
Athletic scholarships should not be the reason an athlete plays a sport. There are intangibles gained (work ethic, confidence, physical/mental toughness, life lessons etc.) that are even more important than athletic scholarships. There is also the fact that girls occupying their weekends and summers competing in softball tend to stay away from drugs/alcohol and the general party crowd. These intangibles are the reasons most parents used to get their children into sports. Today it seems the primary reason for involvement in youth sports is to obtain a scholarship.
This attitude is breeding an entire generation of players that have no idea about sportsmanship and competition. They spend the last 4 years of their travel softball career simply trying to impress college coaches. In many cases, they don't know anything about the colleges watching them play. All they know is it's a possible scholarship opportunity.
While it is the Organization's goal for every CASE Batbuster to obtain a scholarship, it is also a fundamental belief that if we teach our players properly, the scholarships will come. Inevitably, the same things we teach our players to play the game the RIGHT WAY are the qualities college coaches look for in prospective players.
It is our goal to carry on the great tradition of the CASE Batbusters Organization and to take the organization into the 21st Century.
There's more to softball than playing softball. It's our goal to not only make all CASE Batbusters better softball players, but to help them develop into better people. Part of life is dealing with adversity (both on and off the field). We embrace our failures. In fact, it's our belief that we learn far more from our failures than from our successes. Our failures aren't true failures as long as we learn from them and improve. This is how we incorporate the Japanese philosophy of Kintsugi into our program.
"KINTSUGI" literally means gold stitching in Japanese. 金つぎ
It is a Japanese art form of mending broken porcelain with lacquer, dusted with gold, or silver. It dates back to the 15th century. Although we find this mending method of broken pottery with lacquer from an earlier period in prehistoric pottery, KINTSUGI became accepted and used as an art form as the philosophy of Tea Ceremony was established.
Japanese KINTSUGI is not only just mending our broken objects with gold, but it has a more profound meaning and teaching to our attitude towards life.
The broken object gets revived with gold patches.
The broken part is truly accepted and cherished as a history of the object, a form of art, rather than getting disguised with immaculate repairing.
With the Kintsugi mindset, when things are broken, we don't analyze how it broke. We see something is broken without any judgment. We accept things as they are. We see a shining opportunity to re-create this object, with gold. The history of brokenness will shine as if celebrating that it is still existing even more beautifully.
The art of Kintsugi is healing. Healing our mind and our heart from the event and transforming to something greater.
The broken part will never be diminished nor disguised, it remains as a scar but as a beautiful unique design that exists (only one in the world).
When we can embrace all as it is without any judgment, with our heart in peace, that is the healing. We heal our inner self and the outer world will be healed too.
We tend to hide our flaws, wounds, broken parts, as we are programmed to define with negativity. But once we courageously accept the fact and embrace it as they are, without adding any judgment and criticism, like lighting them up with gold, our old pain will become a shining unique form of art, which we will start cherishing. Our pain turns into love and we will become more compassionate to others too.
While doing "Kintsugi" on our precious objects, we do Kintsugi on ourselves too.