- Jun 18, 2013
- 322
- 18
My DD made All Stars and I have been asked to help coach along with 2 of the other coaches from our rec league. I am actually really pleased with the 2 other coaches this year, which is a significant change for our league. The head coach is a woman who is new to our league but has been very enthusiastic with her team and the girls have really seemed to enjoy her style of coaching. I have watched her working with her team and she is very good at working with them on fundamentals of base running and fielding drills and is actively involved with them while doing drills. I think that is massively important.
I have taken on the role of hitting coach. It is what I feel most confident in my abilities to teach and the other coaches were impressed enough with my DD's improvements this year that they asked me to specifically address a few issues with their DD's, so that made me feel pretty good as a coach and also pretty proud of how hard my DD has worked this year. In all honesty, I deserve very little credit for her improvement because she has worked her tail off to get to where she has and continues to amaze me. Anyone who still holds on to the outdated notion that little boys are tougher than little girls has never run into a bunch of 11 year old softball players.
Now my question. These girls have all just gone through a rec season where the 4 teams had 3 pitchers among them. Every at bat was an adventure and most of them were expecting to walk every time up. That means that their mindset is backwards right now. They are looking for every pitch to be a ball and trying to react to strikes. I have basically 2 weeks worth of practices (maybe 5 or 6 sessions) with them to convince them that they need to be sitting on go for every pitch and stop their swings if they see it is going to be a ball. Can anyone recommend some good, fun, drills that I can incorporate into our practice sessions that a 10U All Star team will get a lot out of? I already plan to do a ton of front toss with them to get them swinging at a lot of pitches.
We have 12 girls so I plan to break them into groups of 4 and do some team competitions with 4 resting, 4 infielders, and 4 batting with a point system for hitting the outfield grass on the fly being worth a triple, getting to the grass on the ground being a double, everything else being a live ball and playing to 3 outs. Most runs wins.
Anything other ideas would be greatly appreciated. I have a tee, pop-up net, TCB balls and plenty of parental help to shag balls or do whatever so we should be able to pull off any drills you can throw at me.
I have taken on the role of hitting coach. It is what I feel most confident in my abilities to teach and the other coaches were impressed enough with my DD's improvements this year that they asked me to specifically address a few issues with their DD's, so that made me feel pretty good as a coach and also pretty proud of how hard my DD has worked this year. In all honesty, I deserve very little credit for her improvement because she has worked her tail off to get to where she has and continues to amaze me. Anyone who still holds on to the outdated notion that little boys are tougher than little girls has never run into a bunch of 11 year old softball players.
Now my question. These girls have all just gone through a rec season where the 4 teams had 3 pitchers among them. Every at bat was an adventure and most of them were expecting to walk every time up. That means that their mindset is backwards right now. They are looking for every pitch to be a ball and trying to react to strikes. I have basically 2 weeks worth of practices (maybe 5 or 6 sessions) with them to convince them that they need to be sitting on go for every pitch and stop their swings if they see it is going to be a ball. Can anyone recommend some good, fun, drills that I can incorporate into our practice sessions that a 10U All Star team will get a lot out of? I already plan to do a ton of front toss with them to get them swinging at a lot of pitches.
We have 12 girls so I plan to break them into groups of 4 and do some team competitions with 4 resting, 4 infielders, and 4 batting with a point system for hitting the outfield grass on the fly being worth a triple, getting to the grass on the ground being a double, everything else being a live ball and playing to 3 outs. Most runs wins.
Anything other ideas would be greatly appreciated. I have a tee, pop-up net, TCB balls and plenty of parental help to shag balls or do whatever so we should be able to pull off any drills you can throw at me.
