First Outing

Im now a sophomore and baseball starts in a few days. Last year i had a few opportunities to pitch for my varsity team. In the beggining i did bad because of how nervous i was.. Then later on in the year things starting looking up. What you have to do is develop confidence in your abilities to pitch. If your coach had you to start your first game it probably means he knows your good. You have to go up to the mound knowing your better than the hitter. Confidence can take you a long way

Try some visualization exercises.
Visualize yourself pitching against each individual hitter on the opposing team. See yourself dominating, spotting up, getting ahead early and finishing strong. When you step on the mound for real, your mind remembers the visualization exercises and thinks it has done it before, this should help with confidence and likely performance.
Before starting an "inning" in your visualizations, say a keyword that helps you "lock-in." If you have seen For Love of the Game, when Costner's character says, "Clear the mechanism," he zones in and forgets everything but the next pitch. If you work on this in your visualizations, when you step on the mound for real, and say your keyword, you should feel a confidence and a higher level of focus.

It's all about confidence. Your going to be a little nervous, thats natural. Just brush it off and don't dwell on it. You need to trust yourself and know that you have put in all the hard work in the off-season and that you are good. I agree with cneagles19, visualization works and it has helped me out a lot. Be confident and just pitch like you know how, don't try and do too much.

I know how you feel, I started my first varsity game last tuesday as a sophmore. You just have to relax up there on the mound. Think of it as being no different than stepping out there on JV or summer ball or something. You just have to take a deep breath every now and then and think that the more strikes you throw the faster you will be off the mound. Just have fun and relax thats how you win ball games.