Why cant you roll ground balls to beginners?
New Coach, advice appreciated
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Why cant you roll ground balls to beginners?
Hitting balls to them significantly improves their in-game performance.
Why?
1. You're trying to teach catching hit balls, not cathing rolled balls.
2. Kids learn to move as soon as the ball hits the bat rather than after the ball starts rolling.
3. Kids learn to watch the ball hit the bat. The good players move before the ball hits the bat. (Have you heard someone say, "He's got a quick first step"? The player anticipates how the batter will hit the ball and moves. It's not magic. It's a learnable skill.)
4. The ball comes off a bat differently than a ball rolled out of the hand. 99% of the time, a hit ball is going to bounce, not politely roll across the dirt.
How do you do it?
Have a full bucket of balls and an empty bucket. Have the kids form a line about 20 feet away from you. You get a bat, choke up about 1/2 way, and hit balls to them using one hand. They field the ball and put the ball in the bucket. DO NOT HAVE THEM THROW to 1B.
After a few times, have them start moving forward to the ball. (Teach them to "play the ball rather than the ball playing them.")
For the better kids, start hitting the ball into the ground and make it bounce.
When they can move forward and field the ball, then start having them throw to 1B.
If hitting grounders is so good why did Candrea run a part of his practices that way?
I just think a lot of coaches fall into the trap of hitting rockets at their players and then telling them to "stay down" time after time as the ball goes to the outfield. Rolling balls allows for reduced speed/increased time to force different plays. Honestly I'm in the opposite camp where I'd never hit grounders until players have done an hour or so of rolled balls. And just for 15 mins maybe.
And I'd love to see the science behind your statement that "hitting ground balls significantly improves their in game performance."
Agree with this.
Our practices always start with the following routine:
Warm-up - Light jog + all the stretches + Ladders
Throwing Warm-up - A progression that involves a stationary throw, throwing from a fielding position, a shuffle, and a quicker back-and-forth catch for those who are skilled enough to do it. Long toss is added in when we practice outside.
Infield Everydays - Some stuff I stole from Ron Washington
Outfield Everydays - Some stuff I stole from a college softball coach
Most practices then have a ground ball/fly ball portion. No positions. Just fielding/throwing. We don't do this segment 100% of the time, especially if we're going defense heavy with the rest or if there's something incredibly important, like a new thing to teach or something to address from a recent game. It helps to have multiple coaches. I usually hit the fly balls. I have one or two other coaches hitting the ground balls.
This is the first 30-45 minutes or so of every practice for every level from 10u through HS Varsity. I actually am having an issue with one of my 13u coaches because he has kind of refused to implement this and would rather just put players in random positions and hit the ball to them for 90 minutes.
To our OP: If you're working with beginners, you cannot get to everything in a single practice or even a single season. Some may disagree with this, but I don't believe you can effectively teach newcomers if you try to cram every possible skill into every practice. A more experienced team can probably do this, but you're doing so much instruction that you have to spend more time on everything.
I agree with you in principle, but an hour of rolled balls is excessive.
I think rolled balls are important for teaching proper fielding technique. We don't do rolled balls every single practice, but it's absolutely part of beginner instruction or when we're drilling if things are getting sloppy.
The reason is pretty simple: If I want the girls to focus on their fielding footwork or transitioning into the throw or whatever else any individual may be struggling with (I have a lot who struggle with coordinating upper/lower half), it makes no sense to add in the difficulty of actually fielding the ball. The fielding part is made as easy as possible so they can focus on what they're learning/correcting. Once they get it down, then we progress to hit balls.
Very few of our kids are athletic enough to just field rockets with proper technique without any kind of progression.
Candrea made a cutesy video for the Olympic team.
Generally, please try READING before you respond. It helps a lot in communicating.
As I said in my post (if you read the post), I have the kids line up about 20 feet from me. I choke up on the bat, and I softly hit ground balls to them.
I did not and do not advocate "hitting rockets" to kids. I do believe in teaching them proper techniques (which, just as an aside, does not mean having them put their hands on their knees).
The speed of a ball when I hit it isn't any different than if the ball were rolled to them. What is different is that the bat hits the ball, which helps the kid learn to see the ball off the bat. I don't think I've rolled ground balls to kids in 20 years.
The single most important part of fielding is seeing the bat hit the ball.
As far as science goes, I coached softball/baseball at all levels for 50 years. I've seen marked improvement in kids when they start watching the ball hit the bat.
I do the stuff Ron Washington does when teaching fielding. Washington was one of the premier infielding coaches in MLB. How much time does he spend rolling the ball?
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Washington is rolling/bouncing the ball by hand in most of the video you just posted.
I think you might be interpreting "rolled" a little too literally. It just means tossed/thrown and not hit.
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