need help teaching baserunning

One thing you can do is combine baserunning with hitting and/or fielding to give them more experience. For example, if you're working on ground balls, put runners on base and let them run when you hit the ground balls. Good for the runners, good for the fielders to give them the feeling of how long they have to make a play. Make corrections as you go along.

You can also mix in fly balls and what to do in those situations. If you don't have enough girls on the team for full fielding, just use half the field or one outfielder or whatever you need.

The key is to take what you're doing in one area and add baserunning to it. Just be sure to rotate everyone through so you don't have some kids who get no practice running because they're always fielding. Good way to develop fielders as well.

yeah, gonna make it a 4v4 game, me hitting, no P or C, empty bucket on rubber, baserunners can keep running until ball hits or is in bucket. we will start with no BR, just like in game, and I will mix it up. 3 outs and we switch.

For over running the bag I had a coach stand right behind the 3rd base bag. I would then line my girls up at 1st and practice going 1st to 3rd. With a coach behind the bag no over running happens.

We spend 10 minutes a practice working on base running situations. First couple times we did this in small groups. Last couple the whole team at once. For example I will have 2 lines. One group at 2nd and one group at 1st. With 1 girl on each bag I will give them a situation. For example 1 out flyball to right field. I give them about 2 seconds and then yell go. If a mistake is made I ask the girls in her group what she did wrong. Then we have the next girl step up. This time it may be no outs line drive to 3rd. Go! You won't find many 10u teams that run the bases as well as we do.

New on this site, but thought I'd offer my two cents here as a coach...

First cent: My runners don't get to run when they want. They are to run and look or listen for commands from their base coaches. At that age, your discretion is better than theirs if you want to be competitive. Once they leave the first base, they belong to the third base coach. They get four basic commands/signals when running to second and third: Your up (you can get to base up right and easy), Down, down, down (you need to slide into base), Turn and look, and run through. I'm always reminding my girls: Lead and look, or lead and listen. I also remind them that the base coaches are their eyes on the field, so to not look at the ball when running, but trust their base coaches to watch the ball for them.

I know some coaches may disagree, and let base runners decide what they want to do, but on my team, they get almost no discretion, and this keeps base running mistakes to a minimum.

Second cent: Girls should be sliding when they are close to getting tagged out. Never too early to teach these girls to get down. This should help with the girls that are over running bases.

A drill I do a lot in practice. Have all the girls line up between home plate and first base. They are all going to be running to the baseline between second base and third base. I tell them to "lead and look". I toss a ball up in the air, and they lead off and watch the ball... If I drop it, they run to the opposite baseline and have to slide. If I catch it, they have to get down and back to the base line they started at. This gets them sliding at the next baseline, and learning to get down on a throw down in their direction. It also teaches them to not take off on a ball hit in the air. They have to watch to see what happens to the ball (catch or drop) before they can take off.

Good luck!

phxsoftballdad said:

New on this site, but thought I'd offer my two cents here as a coach...

First cent: My runners don't get to run when they want. They are to run and look or listen for commands from their base coaches. At that age, your discretion is better than theirs if you want to be competitive. Once they leave the first base, they belong to the third base coach. They get four basic commands/signals when running to second and third: Your up (you can get to base up right and easy), Down, down, down (you need to slide into base), Turn and look, and run through. I'm always reminding my girls: Lead and look, or lead and listen. I also remind them that the base coaches are their eyes on the field, so to not look at the ball when running, but trust their base coaches to watch the ball for them.

I know some coaches may disagree, and let base runners decide what they want to do, but on my team, they get almost no discretion, and this keeps base running mistakes to a minimum.

Second cent: Girls should be sliding when they are close to getting tagged out. Never too early to teach these girls to get down. This should help with the girls that are over running bases.

A drill I do a lot in practice. Have all the girls line up between home plate and first base. They are all going to be running to the baseline between second base and third base. I tell them to "lead and look". I toss a ball up in the air, and they lead off and watch the ball... If I drop it, they run to the opposite baseline and have to slide. If I catch it, they have to get down and back to the base line they started at. This gets them sliding at the next baseline, and learning to get down on a throw down in their direction. It also teaches them to not take off on a ball hit in the air. They have to watch to see what happens to the ball (catch or drop) before they can take off.

Good luck!

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I only disagree with you commanding their actions if they are the runner on 3B. I tend to agree with most of what you said, but when they are at 3B taking their lead on the pitch they have 100% autonomy. If they heard me say go, they waited too long. Please let the kids make the decision on passed balls, and grounders to the IF. Teach em why their instantaneous judgement while at third is CRITICAL and then let em play.

bmakj said:

yeah, gonna make it a 4v4 game, me hitting, no P or C, empty bucket on rubber, baserunners can keep running until ball hits or is in bucket. we will start with no BR, just like in game, and I will mix it up. 3 outs and we switch.

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update

thanks for all the tips, have not been able to implement most of them, because I can only do a Sat AM practice now, and most I have had show up has been 5 girls, so hard to do situations even with just IF and BR.

but girls are starting to get it a little better, but their coach had a major brain seizure last night. we were away interleaguing with league that used a pitching machine after 2nd inning (don't get me started on that, whole separate discussion). My girls warmed to it quickly (I kept emphasizing it was just like BP), and we only I think had 3 Ks against machine in 4 innings. even the one girl hitless so far for the year at least put two balls in play in her three at bats (1-3 and 3u, but at least she put ball in play, even got an RBI). offensive coach feeds machine. I am doing this, bases loaded, batters hits hard ground ball to F4, who stops it but does not field clean, but gets ball in glove to tag runner coming from 1B (my DD). she then throws either to F5 or F2, or overthrows F1, I don't recall exactly, but throw is wild, ball goes to fence in front of 3B dugout, so naturally I turn to follow the ball. ball is then thrown back to middle of field, and I see my DD (who was tagged out, but in heat of moment I forgot) and batter (although I forgot she was batter) going in opposite directions, my DD going towards 1B (dugout entrance is almost directly in line with this), and batter had rounded first and because of throw 1B coach sent her to 2B. I yell at my Dd to go back to 2B, and for batter to run back to 1B, but she is confused, and gets tug out on basepath. inning over (was 1 out to begin with). I apologize profusely to girls, especially batter, who is starting to cry, and do absolute best to reassure them they all did right thing, it was all my fault.

girls are doing better, good leads, they understand that if they take a lead from 3B, and ball is thrown to F5, to take off for home (at this level, chances of two good throws and two good catches and good tag before runner touches home are pretty slim). still trying to get less experienced girls to get more aggressive though, ie taking a turn if there is no play when they get to 2B or 3B, continuing on when told to (normally have to say it 3X, and usually the 3X time coach has to change instruction to go back as opportunity is no longer there).

lesson learned, when doing maching or coach pitch, coach doing pitching/feeding machine needs to keep lips shut, and let base coaches handle it, as impossible to see everything and easy to get turned around like I did and/or forget what happened when you turn back around.

FWIW, we still won 11-6, but all my parents said it should have been 13-6 (we could only have scored two more that inning).