joes87 and others - assuming the pitcher is pitching legally, just really quickly, what strategies do you recommend that are legal and effective in slowing things down? In the situation outlined, why wasn't the opposing coach a) complaining and b) having his players keep their back foot out of the box until their front foot is set. If pitcher begins wind-up before back leg is in the box, then tell batter to NOT accomodate the pitcher (keep back foot out of box) and have a no-pitch called.
In our case the coach was complaining the ump did not want to do anything about it. It probably had to do with the fact that it was 42 degrees outside with a nasty wind.
Im think, but if there is an IHSA ump on here they should be able to confirm, that we have a speed up rule under our HS rules and the batter must keep the backfoot in the box when getting signs from the coach. Again I maybe wrong on this but this seems to be the norm in our area. This is where the problem came in. The ump would have his hand up. As soon as the kid started to move the front foot back into the box the kid would start his movement to the set position. While he was doing this the batter was still getting set and the ump was taking his hand down. The ball was being delivered almost at the same time as the ump settling in for the pitch. Its probably a HTBT type of thing to completely understand what was happening. The pitcher was using one complete motion without coming to a set position with a pause.
Our coach did complain but the ump did not want to hear it. There were lots of requests for timeout as soon as the kids were set in the box. In many instances the pitch was still thrown as the ump could not get the timeout called quick enough to stop the pitch.