{"id":20784,"date":"2013-04-30T18:07:22","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T01:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/?p=20784"},"modified":"2013-04-30T18:07:51","modified_gmt":"2013-05-01T01:07:51","slug":"tv-news-story-on-derrick-zechman-team-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/?p=20784","title":{"rendered":"TV news story on Derrick Zechman, Team USA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script height=\"365px\" width=\"650px\" src=\"http:\/\/player.ooyala.com\/iframe.js#ec=A4dzRiYjp4LdBI_XdjeiLnDwvZlsABHo&#038;pbid=f9babf3a1fd64fbb82916ce9d76ffcfa\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_20785\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-20785\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wnep.com\/2013\/04\/30\/derrick-zechman-usa-national-fastpitch-softball-team\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/wnep-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Click logo for original news story.\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-20785\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-20785\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Click logo for original news story.<\/figcaption><\/figure>Warrior Run girl\u2019s softball coach Garth Watson pitches to 33-year-old Derrick Zechman from Turbotville. Zechman is one of 17 players on the USA Men\u2019s Fastpitch National Softball team.<\/p>\n<p>And just back from New Zealand-Derrick and the team finished 7th out of 16 countries at the World Championships.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnbelievable the first time putting the uniform on and competing for team USA-having USA across the chest is just an honor. I\u2019ll have stories to tell my son when he grows up, just that I was a part of something unbelievable,\u201d said Derrick Zechman.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a great honor for him to be part of Team USA. He\u2019s worked hard. I\u2019ve known him for a long time. You don\u2019t get a better guy than that,\u201d said Garth Watson.<\/p>\n<p>Derrick wrestled and played baseball here at Warrior Run Area high-school. It wasn\u2019t until he was 16 when the interest for softball started to grow.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWithout my father playing the game I wouldn\u2019t be aware of it. A lot of people who play fastpitch they got involved because they had a family member or a father playing the game. It\u2019s unfortunate because there\u2019s a lot of players out there with the skill level. I wasn\u2019t even aware of a national team when I was younger playing. They have a junior team that competes against other countries as well and it\u2019s just trying to get the game promoted,\u201d again said Derrick.<br \/>\nDerrick is always working to stay at the top of his game. In the next several months he will be traveling to tournaments here in the United States as part of his PA Power team, and then in July it\u2019s back out to South Bend Indiana for camp and once again trying to make that USA men\u2019s fastpitch softball team.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs long as I stay sharp and produce like I\u2019m capable of doing hopefully I\u2019ll be able to be on the team again for 2015,\u201d added Derrick.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEverybody talks about the twitch when their hitting. Obviously when you we\u2019re throwing to him he\u2019s got a pretty fast twitch? Yes! You got to be ready to get out-of-the-way. The screen is not big enough when he\u2019s hitting them back at you. He hits missiles that\u2019s for sure,\u201d added Garth.<\/p>\n<p>The next big event for Team USA is the Pan American games in 2015 in Toronto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Warrior Run girl\u2019s softball coach Garth Watson pitches to 33-year-old Derrick Zechman from Turbotville. Zechman is one of 17 players on the USA Men\u2019s Fastpitch National Softball team. And just back from New Zealand-Derrick and the team finished 7th out of 16 countries at the World Championships. \u201cUnbelievable the first time putting the uniform on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12,19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20784","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-asa","8":"category-isf","9":"category-players","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20784"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20787,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20784\/revisions\/20787"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}