Thinking outside the diamond

Ohio-born but Nelson-based, Ed Dolejs has been one of New Zealand softball's most celebrated coaches, highlighted by the New Zealand women's 1982 world championship title in Taiwan. He's just launched a book on his life and achievements, titled Diamonds in the Sun, and spoke to Wayne Martin about his philosophies.

Ed Dolejs leans forward and locks you in his gaze as he attempts to share with you his theory on calculated risks.

There's an unmistakable, if restrained, intensity in his delivery, so you listen intently.

The man's got some clout after all. The 82-year-old former New Zealand women's world champion softball coach didn't achieve his reputation as one of the sport's leading international coaches without thinking outside the square, or in this case, diamond. As a result, he's also attracted some occasional derision from uninformed critics.

But even if you don't have softball seeping from your every pore, you quickly appreciate that, in Dolejs' case, he might just know what he's talking about. After his teams' medal-winning efforts at four consecutive world championships, including gold in Taiwan in 1982, he's earned some street cred.

In essence, what Dolejs is attempting to explain is that however fully a team has grasped the game's fundamentals – and he is a stickler for the basics – occasionally you have to take a calculated risk. Dolejs offers an example.

"You've got a runner at third base, tied game, it's important for you to get that runner home," he says. "If you try to steal home, what are your chances of success? Against a good team, not very good. If you have a fast runner and you teach them the best thing to do when caught in a pickle, your odds are improved over somebody who doesn't know what to to do."

By Dolejs' own calculation, he estimates the base runner has a "one out of five or six" chance of stealing home.

"You don't have any pinch hitters on the bench, the batter has struck out twice and popped up once and they're not a good batter anyway and there's nothing you can do about it and they're on two strikes. What do you think the odds are that they're going to score that runner? One out of 20? One out of 25? And the other way is one out of five?

"Now, as a coach you'd say attempt to steal, right? You won't do it, because if that batter strikes out, pops up or grounds out, you're not in trouble. You have that batter attempt to steal and four out of five times they're thrown out, you're in trouble.

"The only chance you had of winning the game and you blew it. Would you do it? Do you have the courage? Is it good softball sense? Yes it is.

"The only way that you're going to be able to do that is if you've got your players convinced and that's what I did with my players. I showed them why it made sense and then when it failed, they knew that we [still] did the right thing.

"What the press said, what the people in the stand said, what the softball board said, that didn't matter, not to these players. They understood ... that's the difference.

"When you want to do something that appears to be unconventional, make sure your players understand."

That, in a nutshell, is the essence of a world championship-winning coach. Take the risk and dare to win, or simply take the soft option and die wondering.

It's also what has set Dolejs apart from other coaches who have since tried to emulate his international successes.

Dolejs' famous and unprecedented Umbrella Defence play during the 1989 South Pacific Classic final against China in New Zealand, involving moving an outfielder into the infield, was another instance of intuitive thinking on the hoof.

"It had never been done before and never been done since, because it takes an awful lot of courage to take an outfielder out of the outfield and put them into the infield," he says.

"If it had gone wrong for me, I'd have been a goat. The thing is, I was always prepared to be the goat and when I'm teaching coaches ... I say if you're going to improve in anything, you've got to be prepared to make a fool of yourself. Don't be afraid.

"The risks that I took were only perceived to be risks."

Ultimately, the ploy worked, with New Zealand eventually winning the gold medal.

One word that echoes throughout Dolejs' coaching philosophy is "understanding" or as Dolejs explains – "to use knowledge in harmony with good timing when making decisions".

Too many coaches, he says, don't see the bigger picture. Where he used video analysis to watch full game scenarios as a key part of his scrupulous analytical process, coaches these days tend to focus solely on more specific areas such as pitching or batting.

Despite perceptions that Ohio native Dolejs brought a fund of innovative techniques with him from the United States, he says his coaching style was developed in Godzone.

"I learned it in New Zealand. Yes, I came with some talent, sure, but when New Zealand Softball made me national coach, it gave me the opportunity to travel this country extensively year after year and speak to all the coaches, and I mean all of them, and putting the best from everybody together to be able to do what I did. I did not learn that overseas, I learned that in New Zealand from New Zealanders. Yes, at an international level, I spoke to other coaches, of course but, to me, I really feel that I did it the New Zealand way, the way that they would want it to be done."

It was during his travels that he picked up another invaluable piece of information that would help mould his future international lineups.

Hailing from Nelson, as he did, he quickly learned to appreciate the fact that not all of the country's best players were based in the main centres. As a result, Nelson's Karen Fraser (later Rackley), Linda Hawthorn and Jane Miles became integral components of his 1978 bronze medal-winning team in El Salvador, with Fraser going on to also play a part in the 1982 championship-winning campaign in Taiwan.

"Women, men, it doesn't matter, the talent in this country for sport is immense – not just sport; other things as well. The people are talented. It's not always brought out and in the sport, it's not discovered in a lot of cases.

"I found out as national coach, that the talent even in the little associations, you could go to Westport and Greymouth, Hokitika, up in the Far North, the Bay of Islands, the talent was everywhere. The previous selectors, and I think even since, didn't have the opportunity [to travel] that I did as national coach and so they tended to choose [players] from the big centres.

"Even on the national team, I had players who the other players never heard of. Isn't that ridiculous? And what's more, these players went on to be stars. Some of them went into the International Hall of Fame. So the talent is there, not only that, it's still there.

"I don't think that the others believed that the talent was there because the competition in the smaller associations wasn't there, it wasn't up to the standard of the competition in the big centres.

"That's natural. Again, the reason that I was able to see it was because I was the national coach and I spent as much time in the small associations as I did in the big ones," he says.

Dolejs has been off the international scene for 20 years now, but he still despairs at New Zealand's unfulfilled potential. He's tried to offer advice to various coaches and officials which has largely fallen on deaf ears.

"I thought, is anybody going to listen, because it was in 94, which was just four years after my world championship involvement ended, that I sent the first letter and it was following Colin Ward's period with the New Zealand White Sox.

"And I said at the time that if they didn't get everything right, and I was referring to the [Softball] New Zealand board, if they didn't get everything right, they would not see a medal for the next decade and a half.

"They appointed [former players] Cheryl Kemp and Naomi Shaw [as White Sox coaches], who I saw as really competent people, but not ready. So many thought that they were, but of course now, it's over two decades and no medal. Not only that, we're probably looking at another couple [of decades].

"We have had different executive officers to promote the game and to do what they can to see that the teams perform to the highest standard possible. I can talk to them, they'll agree with me, and they'll do nothing.

"I think it's ego with the coaches. I also believe that for a lot of people, that they would rather do it their way and lose than do it your way and win without seeing that all I can do is help. You use your own initiative and intelligence to take it beyond what I'm saying, but listen to what I'm saying."

"Defence is the key to really being at the top and staying there. Of course, what the coaches are doing, they're picking these big girls who can slam the ball a country mile but can't run and can't field. And what's more, when they are facing the world's best pitching, they can't hit either because it doesn't work like that. I think [the players] are still there, it's just that they're not the ones that are being sought out.

"You can't say never, but I wouldn't even see a medal prospect in the next couple of decades. But you never know."

- © Fairfax NZ News