Practice plans...

I am looking for some good practice plans for a 12U travel team. I see a lot of examples on the board about bad practice plans (no plans, all the girls on the field with coach hitting, girls sitting idle, etc.) and I understand. I would like some examples of good practice plans for a two hour outdoor practice two times a week. Basic structure is fine like:
-warm up and stretching 15 minutes
-defensive drills 45 minutes
-hitting station rotations 1 hour

We are finishing up our indoor practices and would like to develop some outdoor practice plans that I can use as a baseline and start creating consistent outdoor practices that the girls can get accustomed to.

Thank you in advance.

PM me with your email address.

Generally, we do 15-30 minutes of general defensive work, a lesson, batting practice, and then a game.

So, 15-30 minutes of popups, flyballs, groundballs, etc., followed by a lesson on defensive or offensive skill, then batting stations, followed by a game.

Your energy level is very important. Teasing, talking, encouraging, etc. is important. You should use "hustle" about a million times each practice.

I do lesson plans for defensive work and "the short game". I've found that going through the analysis helps me organize my practice better.


----Lesson Plan---

Goals--Generally, what are you trying to teach?
Objectives--what are you specifically trying to teach?
Prerequisites--what should the players already know what to do?
Materials--Does anything need to to be prepared in advance?
Lesson Procedure--Exactly what will be done
Assessment--how will you assess whether the players have improved?

Example lesson plan:

Catching a flyball against a fence

Goals

The goal is to teach players to be comfortable while catching flyballs in foul territory near the fence.

Objective

Teach the proper method for catching flyballs near a fence. If they know how to catch balls next to a fence, then they will be more confident with catching popups in foul territory.

Prequisites

Players should be able to catch easy popups with a 100% success rate.

Materials

bat, balls, pitching machine and balls.

Lesson Description

Players are first shown the fence. The danger associated with the fence is explained. The benefit of being able to confidently catch balls in fall territory is also explaned.

Players are then taught to "find the fence, find the ball". For balls close to the fence, players are taught to touch the fence and then move back toward the field of play.

A player stands at 1B. The player then runs to the fence, touches the fence. A popup is then tossed to them.

After the players have been through the process once, the pitching machine is set up so that balls shot from the machine are "popped up" and land very close to the fence at 1B.

The players then position themselves at 1B. A ball is placed into the pitching machine. The player "finds the fence, finds the ball", and catches the ball.

Coach will carefully observe the player to make sure the player is approaching the fence correctly and "finding the fence with the hand", and then moving back toward the field. This drill will be repeated many times by all players.

The coach then hits popus into foul territory. The coach will again observe the player and the technique.

Assessment.

Whether the player demonstrates the ability to catch foul balls with confidence.

I too would be interested in some new ideas for practices. The girls seem to
enjoy and learn, but I am growing stale. I implement a few new drills a year,
but this summer, I would be interested in a new approach

I don't play travel ball, however, we do have plans for the way that we work things on the various teams that I play for and help with.

It generally goes like this: We run, stretch, throw. We'll occasionally throw in a throwing game to spice things up. If bad throws are made, they are punished by usually 15 sit ups. We'll play a game such as lining the girls up and having them throw. One end will take a step back, they'll throw again. If someone drops the ball or misses it completely, they are eliminated. The last pair left standing will be granted "immunity" (to a certain extent) for bad throw sit ups for that practice. Great little thing and the girls are into that big time. (We really implemented this with a 12U fall team)

After we play our game, we'll usually split up. Two will go to the batting cage. One will be in there, the other one will be doing some sort of tee work while waiting. The pitchers and catchers will go off and work. The rest of the girls will usually do some sort of fielding. We'll do drills with that or we'll have them all out in the field and we'll hit them balls. Not for the entire time, of course. Depending on the number of girls left to do fielding, we'll occasionally have some throw on helmets and run when we hit the balls. With the group that we had in the fall, we especially needed to work on game like situations. They had the physical stuff, but a lot of the mental focus wasn't there.

Sometimes we'll do hitting stations. We'll have a soft toss station, a hitting stick station, another hitting stick area (we have one where you don't need someone to hold it), tees for various work, pitching machine, and some bunting. We like to have the girls in groups of twos, so depending on the number we'll have enough stations to equal that. If the pitching machine is in use, they'll spend however long it takes the two girls to hit their balls before they move on. Probably about 5 minutes.

We always, always end with a game. I like to take all the gloves, throw them in the outfield, and have the girls in two teams to race for them. We'll also play tree-rock-bridge, which is a great game. This link has a nice variation of the game we play in order to have it best explained to you. I'm constantly on the look out for new drills to try, so we're often doing weird things.

I helped my Varsity coach with a camp at my school over the summer. We placed a stuffed animal on a bucket and the girls threw a ball at it, trying to knock it off. They love that, it gets sadistic however! We've also played the criss cross drill as well as many others. Occasionally, I'll ask the girls what they want to do and we'll work that in.

Great posts so far. Keep them coming, I'm sure everyone can benefit. I mainly wanted to focus on practice structure and have gotten a lot of good feedback.

I will throw in a few throwing drills that I like to do. After the girls have warmed up their arms, and are still paired up, I have them do 'first to ten'; the first pair to ten wins, if you drop or miss a throw, you pair must start over. Then I throw in the 'teamwork drill'; similar to 'first to ten' but each pair must make it to ten without dropping. If one pair drops the ball, that pair must yell, "START OVER!!!" and all pairs must start counting from 0 again, even if your pair had made it to ten already. The drill is done when all teams reach ten and are holding their ball in the air. If the drill drags on too long, I tell them all to hold the balls. I have all the balls go to the players on one side and have them throw back and forth on my count... one... two... three... until we get to ten with no drops. They seem to like it.

Again, keep the practice plans coming. Especially for a 2 hour practice. I can never seam to get my 11 girls through the 4 hitting stations in less than an hour unless I rush them.

When your trying to do hitting stations pair the girls up (or groups of three) so they can alternate at the same station. They need rest time to recover and be able to give you quality swings. Try to keep reps to 10 max then alternate (some drills might even be take 1 rep and alternate) soemtimes fewer reps per "turn" gets better focus and better simulates game pressure where an at bat may be 1-5 pitches.

[/QUOTE]Here was our fall practice plan: We are a ministry based softball team so our groups are named after books of the Bible (just in case your wondering when you see it)

First was our BP plan

60min Batting Practice (4 groups of 3; 15min each)

Matthew (Machalia, AnnaB, Ashleigh) Mark (Carlie, Ashton, Grace)
Luke (AnnaH, Juli, Madie) John (Shelby, Ally)

Matthew – BP/RUN/OF*/IF^ ( *Machalia pitches in OF time, AnnaB pitches in IF time)
Mark--------IF/BP/RUN/OF* (*Carlie pitches during OF time)
Luke--------OF*/IF^/BP/RUN (*AnnaH pitches in OF time, ^Juli pitches in IF time)
John-------RUN/OF*/IF/BP ( *Ally pitches in OF time)
(Scottie/Coby take care of pitchers Anthony throws BP/John takes care of hitters/runners)
Round 1 – Bunt R to 2b, Free Cut, Hit behind runner, Free Cut, GB right side or Fly ball CF/RF, Free Cut
Round 2 – 2 Free Cuts, Bunt runner to 3b, Free Cut, GB Right Side or Sac Fly CF/RF
Round 3 – 1 Free cut, Suicide Squeeze, 3 free cuts
Round 4 – 2 sac bunts, 3 bunt for base hit
Round 5 – 2 outs, runner on 3b (Score the run) Squeeze bunt or hit away {batters choice
Round 6 – 1 cut: Situation of the day: Runner on 3b/1 out

below are defensive drills for infielders - all of our players play 2 positions (1 infield position + one other, catcher or outfield) pitching doesn't count for this
the exponents are which coach is running which drill

30min Fundamental Drill Series
5------------------------6------------------------4-----------------------3-----------------------2
Gb5-3¹---------------gb6-4 feed²----------6-4pivots--------------gb5-3-------------wildpitch to HP³
5-4feed¹-------------gb6-3²----------------5-4 pivots-------------gb6-3-----------------popups³
Gb5-2¹-------------4-6pivots---------------4-6feeds²-----------pop-ups³---------------5-2 tag
Pop-ups¹----------3-6pivots-----------------gb4-2²-------------3-6feeds³---------------4-2tag
2-5tag--------------pop-ups¹------------3-4bunt@1b²---------3-4cover1b---------2-5stealthrow³
5-3bunt¹-----------2-6tag@4/5------------pop-ups²------------5-3 bunt-----------2-6stealthrow@4/5³
6-5 slap throw¹---6-5 slap throw¹------cover 1b bunt²----1b/c to1b@1bunt²----bunts throw to 2b@1²

5= third baseman or third base
6= ss or second base (ex: 4-6 pivots: 2nd baseman double play feeds to SS at second base)
4 = second baseman or second base
3= first baseman or first base
2= catcher or home plate

Additional
5----------------------------6--------------- --4----------------------3---------------------2
3b to SS@3 bunt¹---cover 3b bunt¹----cover 1b bunt²---1b to 2b@1 bunt²----wildpitch/pb to HP³
6-5 slap throw¹-----6-5 slap throw¹----cover 1b bunt²----1b/c to1b@1bunt²---bunts throw to 2b@1²
5-4 feed in bc¹-----Cover 3b on steal³--5-4 pivots¹--------popups² -------------2-6@3b on steal³
Popups¹--------------Loopers²----------Loopers²-------------Popups¹---------------Popups³


Loopers = texas leauguers

I might add there is no teaching going on during this practice - this is straight up drill work
teaching fundamentals should be done in a individual or group period

After this you can do team offense or defense, work on relays, cuts and any other situation you want for 30-45 minutes and have a great 2-2.5 hour practice

that's kinda hard to see - the way it translated from my word file to the message board - if anyone wants a pdf version of this just email me - can you attach a file to a post? - okay i think i fixed it where you can see what's going on

we do a whole lot in 30-35 minutes on defense - i used to do this with my high school baseball team - obviously some of these have been converted over for softball purposes - originally from Ron Polk baseball pllaybook - called the Fundamental Drill Series

Batting practice has everyone involved getting something done