Switching to Lefty

[guero_gordo]

FWIW, I've seen it work out.
Girl on DD's team last spring was a few months into the switch. She was thrown/struck out most of the time, but by the end of the summer, 7 months later, obp was consistenly at or above .750, and she was starting to be able to hit with some authority, poking a hard grounder or line drive through when she came up with runners on(batted 1st or 2nd usually).

She did have a D2 slapper as a hitting coach, and team coach who knew enough to leave her alone, no matter what happened early on.

 

[GOINGDEEP]

This is our slapper, just signed last week ( big east conf ). She was always a tiny tiny girl about 80lbs and average height growing up, in the last 2 years she has really shot up ( 5'9 and put on some good muscle ). She leads off for us and scores 80% of the time she gets on base, she's fast as lightning. Some teams will walk the #9 just to clog the base in front of her.

Like others said before, she swung away and bunted when young and to be honest taught herself to slap on down the road. She now slaps a good 90% at bat.

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[Sparky Guy]

This sound like really good advice, unfortunately I am not going to follow it.

One of the problems with clinics is that you really need to work around their scheduling. Their slap hitting clinic is not until Feb. and DD is going stir crazy looking for something softballish to do now.

DD likes clinics better the private instructions. Only 1 facility by us does fastpitch clinics, all the others just do private instruction, so you just need to go with the flow.

We will see where she is at in March/ April and whatever she seems to be doing better at, or enjoys more, we will concentrate on.

Contact Liz Jagielski-Bouck for slapping. She does clinics as well as individual lessons. You won't find too many better than her for teaching slapping in the Chicago area. She is close to you. She works out of the A's facility in Mokena which is a short drive for you.

liz.jagielski@yahoo.com

 

[Indiana]

My DD never could hit it with any sort of conviction until just this year. She is 14 now and just started hitting the ball to the fence. One of her teammates is right handed, but is a power hitter from the left. My brother is right handed but is a left handed hockey player. Lots of pathways to success, which may come late and all of a sudden.

 

[quincy]

As of 6:00 PM tonight she is a lefty so we will see how it goes.

DD is really competitive is one of the reasons she likes clinics, she likes competing with the other players. Depending on what they do in the clinic she is going to want to switch back.

I can hear her on the ride home already, “I could have hit better then x if I was batting righty”.

It should be interesting and fun.

 

[CoachChuck]

It doesn't matter whether you start out swinging, or slapping, from the left side first. Just stay committed and put in the work and she can be successful. It will take some game at bats before she will be consistent either way. Just stay the course.

My daughter also switched to lefty at age 11. She learned slapping first, but she still did many of the full swing drills on the tee along with her slapping drills on the tee. She was/is a hard worker so she worked on it 4 or 5 days a week from November to the first tournament in April. After the first few tournaments, she had batted herself into the lineup on a predominately second year 12U A team that won our first 5 tournaments and continued to place well the rest of the year.

She hasn't batted righty since the day she decided to officially move to the left side. At 12U she pretty much only needed bunt and soft slap, master those and she can have success very early on. She did mix in some hard slap later in the first season as teams made adjustments. But even in her second year 12U A she only used hard slap probably 10-15% of her atbats on the season. She ended with a .703 obp this year playing just over 90 games.

My DD isn't all that fast, more quick than fast, but her ball placement allows her to get on base more than some faster players I have seen slap.

 

[mad hornet]

Quincy I am going through this exact same thing with my 11 YO. One thing I have noticed working with hitters who bat left and throw right is that their top hand is very weak. I have mine doing a lot of one handed work. Minimum of 5 min per day off a tee using a rubber mallot. 33% is bottom hand, 67% top hand. We have the added benefit of playing indoors once a week and access to a hitting cage so we're hoping to fast track that "bad year" over the winter. So far it's not going bad. The biggest problem (depending on your perspective) is that she is so small that she draws a lot of walks in the games. Would rather see her get pitches to hit despite the fact she's getting on.

 

[mad hornet]

I have helped about a hundred players switch to LH with slap skills. It takes a lot of work since she will need to continuously improve 4 basic skills...full swing, hard slap, soft slap and drag bunt. Each of these has their own unique mechanics. In my experience, the players and parents who are determined to stick with it, always think the results are worth the effort. The other wildcard is the team coach....some don't understand or like slapping and some are not patient with the game results during the transition. New slappers will need support.

I have previously offered to send my slapping instruction notes to any forum member who sends me an email request at slaphit@aol.com. Files are too big to post in forum. Not sure if anyone has found them useful.

When my 11YO dd got into a funk with her slapping recently, I reached out to go4um at slaphit@aol.com. The tutorials he sent contained extremely helpful information that we had not ever seen or heard from her hitting coach or slapping camps she's attended. In two weeks of working on key points we learned from Don, I am happy to say that dd is back! Thanks!