Competitive End-of-practice Drills
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LOL. The like/dislike ratio is pretty evenly split on my team. We have a lot of fast girls who just like to run. There are a few who absolutely hate it. Some girls will conserve their effort until the competition gets to their level. If they dog it too much early on, I will call them out on it.
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Never a fan of this drill. Why not do a drill to see who can hit it over the fence. You stay until you do it. Or make them bench press some weights. Every time I see it run it's the same order. I'm fine with conditioning, but it's a punishment to the slow kids or kids who might have asthma or something.
If you don't like it, don't have your team do it
I will agree that the results are somewhat predictable, but it's not the same every time (we don't do it every week). The girls that are close to each other in speed will not always finish in the same order, and they push each other. The first time we ran it, our slowest two were bitching and crying at the end. Now, they are battling and giving a good effort. They still hate it, but their effort is much improved.
Makes me wonder if you can flip the drill around - last one to finish is out everyone else settles in for another round. That would make making it to the end the goal instead of the punishment and turns it into conditioning because you won't dog it early.
In theory, I like the idea. However, that scenario quickly becomes a contest of who can go the slowest for those who can probably benefit the most running.
- Base Running Race (home and 2nd starting positions)
- Players at Short and 2B, hit grounders, they have to field clean and try to either 1.) knock ball off tee on home plate or 2.) throw into the Bownet (Big Mouth) -- only reason for SS and 2B is quicker between girls, can ramp up the speed a bit and teams...
- Relay drill; split girls into 2 teams and spread them out across the outfield or however you can for decent distances between them; start balls on same end of both lines, and relay all the way out and back. Stress proper receive-turn-throw, and speed...
- Popcorn (at least what we call it); create a square with gloves, cones, or something "safe"; put 1 girl in the middle and she has to hustle to catch everything you throw in the square. She has to catch it and then quickly toss it out of the square to stay safe since she'll be looking up pretty much the whole time. You just throw pop ups and dinks and whatever you want all over the square (square can be as big as you think your girls can be challenged to cover, typically about 10yds each side?)
- Stealing drills as competition; Get work with pitcher and catcher and SS (or coach) covering steals... safe = keep going; out = out... focus on take off and slides while giving catcher and SS some throwdown work
- 1-pitch scrimmage... split them up in to 3-girl teams. 1 team at a time up to bat, 1 pitch only - hit it safely and keep going; out is out; strike or foul is out; no bunting
- Bunt game with hoola-hoops or drawn circles in the dirt for points...
- We also will end with simulated defensive scrimmage... Have to get "3-up / 3-down" for x amount of innings in a row (the x depends on how the rest of practice went...) any bobbles or misses reset the outs and innings... We also try to time the infield hits to keep the play under 3 seconds if possible... (3.5 - 4 seconds if we're feeling generous....
- Players at Short and 2B, hit grounders, they have to field clean and try to either 1.) knock ball off tee on home plate or 2.) throw into the Bownet (Big Mouth) -- only reason for SS and 2B is quicker between girls, can ramp up the speed a bit and teams...
- Relay drill; split girls into 2 teams and spread them out across the outfield or however you can for decent distances between them; start balls on same end of both lines, and relay all the way out and back. Stress proper receive-turn-throw, and speed...
- Popcorn (at least what we call it); create a square with gloves, cones, or something "safe"; put 1 girl in the middle and she has to hustle to catch everything you throw in the square. She has to catch it and then quickly toss it out of the square to stay safe since she'll be looking up pretty much the whole time. You just throw pop ups and dinks and whatever you want all over the square (square can be as big as you think your girls can be challenged to cover, typically about 10yds each side?)
- Stealing drills as competition; Get work with pitcher and catcher and SS (or coach) covering steals... safe = keep going; out = out... focus on take off and slides while giving catcher and SS some throwdown work
- 1-pitch scrimmage... split them up in to 3-girl teams. 1 team at a time up to bat, 1 pitch only - hit it safely and keep going; out is out; strike or foul is out; no bunting
- Bunt game with hoola-hoops or drawn circles in the dirt for points...
- We also will end with simulated defensive scrimmage... Have to get "3-up / 3-down" for x amount of innings in a row (the x depends on how the rest of practice went...) any bobbles or misses reset the outs and innings... We also try to time the infield hits to keep the play under 3 seconds if possible... (3.5 - 4 seconds if we're feeling generous
....I haven't checked this thread in a while. Lots of good stuff here, and I'll be using some of these for my summer team (most of the girls from the HS team, plus some others).
One game we played when we were stuck inside: I would dump a bunch of balls by the baseline of one end of the gym. Split them into two teams (I always let them pick their own teams, and it worked out well). One girl on each team would go to the other end of the gym with a bucket. The rest would line up at around the free throw line by the pile of balls. On my signal, they'd have to run, grab a ball, then make a good, strong throw to the "catcher," who would then put the ball in the bucket. The next girl on the team couldn't start until the ball was in the bucket. Team that finished a round first would get a point, and we'd go until each girl was the "catcher" one time.
It's not particularly complicated, but one thing I liked about the drill is that by forcing them to turn their back to the person catching, they'd have to bend down, pick up the ball, and then use good throwing mechanics to get themselves turned into a position to make a good throw. The first few times we played it, throws were awful because they'd just grab the ball and fling it. Eventually they figured out that if they took an extra half-second to get in a good throwing position, they'd save time because the catcher wouldn't have to run all over the gym to get the ball.
When we started it in March, there would be dropped balls/missed throws all over the place. The last time we played it a few weeks ago, if a single ball wasn't thrown/caught cleanly, that team was likely going to lose. So, by accident, I found a game that also showed me the progress they made with some basic skills of the game.
I highly recommend it for inexperienced players when you're stuck inside.
Another one I did to get them running: I split them up into 3 groups based on their tryout home to first times. Then I lined them all up on the baseline in the gym in those groups, any order (So the slowest 5 were on one end, middle 5 in the middle, fastest 5 on the other end, but I didn't dictate any particular order within those 3 groups). They would race to the other end and back, but the trick was they were only racing the person to their right. If they beat that person, they took their spot (if you were in the "fastest" spot on the far right, it was your job to defend that title). Players could move back and forth from those initial 3 groups. I just did that to make the competition more interesting from the beginning. It worked. We had a nice battle between two of our faster girls, who would trade spots back and forth with each race, and it didn't discourage the slower girls, who still got to compete against the other slower girls and maybe move up a spot or two. I haven't done this one in a while, but I think I'm going to bring it back for the summer.
One game we played when we were stuck inside: I would dump a bunch of balls by the baseline of one end of the gym. Split them into two teams (I always let them pick their own teams, and it worked out well). One girl on each team would go to the other end of the gym with a bucket. The rest would line up at around the free throw line by the pile of balls. On my signal, they'd have to run, grab a ball, then make a good, strong throw to the "catcher," who would then put the ball in the bucket. The next girl on the team couldn't start until the ball was in the bucket. Team that finished a round first would get a point, and we'd go until each girl was the "catcher" one time.
It's not particularly complicated, but one thing I liked about the drill is that by forcing them to turn their back to the person catching, they'd have to bend down, pick up the ball, and then use good throwing mechanics to get themselves turned into a position to make a good throw. The first few times we played it, throws were awful because they'd just grab the ball and fling it. Eventually they figured out that if they took an extra half-second to get in a good throwing position, they'd save time because the catcher wouldn't have to run all over the gym to get the ball.
When we started it in March, there would be dropped balls/missed throws all over the place. The last time we played it a few weeks ago, if a single ball wasn't thrown/caught cleanly, that team was likely going to lose. So, by accident, I found a game that also showed me the progress they made with some basic skills of the game.
I highly recommend it for inexperienced players when you're stuck inside.
Another one I did to get them running: I split them up into 3 groups based on their tryout home to first times. Then I lined them all up on the baseline in the gym in those groups, any order (So the slowest 5 were on one end, middle 5 in the middle, fastest 5 on the other end, but I didn't dictate any particular order within those 3 groups). They would race to the other end and back, but the trick was they were only racing the person to their right. If they beat that person, they took their spot (if you were in the "fastest" spot on the far right, it was your job to defend that title). Players could move back and forth from those initial 3 groups. I just did that to make the competition more interesting from the beginning. It worked. We had a nice battle between two of our faster girls, who would trade spots back and forth with each race, and it didn't discourage the slower girls, who still got to compete against the other slower girls and maybe move up a spot or two. I haven't done this one in a while, but I think I'm going to bring it back for the summer.
CoachJD, it may not work for your team because of number of girls and/or lack of willing dads to help. We used to scrimmage for the last 45~ minutes of practice, almost every practice. Me and another coach, and three other dads who used to play ball. We'd split them up and put us adults where ever we were needed to make the numbers work. We played hard and didn't cut the girls any slack at all, in fact there was so much junk talking going on that sometimes it would get serious! Loved making them mad!! But, we controlled things and put them in game situations in certain counts and would stop play to fix/correct any issues we saw. It's also a good way to get the girls to open up and talk, ask questions about certain situations.
One thing is absolutely for sure, girls like beating their coaches, their dads, adults in general because they played all out!
Now if you want to go in the complete opposite direction as far as NOT having fun.......when we would start our infield part of practice, me and the other coach would do crossfire and when 2 or 3 girls would boot a short hop, we'd stop right then, split them in half, one half would line up in front of one dugout, the other half line up in front of the other dugout.......then for about 15 minutes we'd do our hated short hop drill. This was in 12U, never seen so much crying, and whining, and tears and snot in my life. With the occasional knot on a shin or two, we were hated devils!! But you know what, every girl on that team could eat up short hops at the end of 12U! They hated me hitting them grounders cause I could put a ball anywhere I wanted, short hops, line drives, bloopers right behind 1B & 3B bags and perfect balls for the girls to dive for. Dang I miss coaching.....sometimes!
One thing is absolutely for sure, girls like beating their coaches, their dads, adults in general because they played all out!
Now if you want to go in the complete opposite direction as far as NOT having fun.......when we would start our infield part of practice, me and the other coach would do crossfire and when 2 or 3 girls would boot a short hop, we'd stop right then, split them in half, one half would line up in front of one dugout, the other half line up in front of the other dugout.......then for about 15 minutes we'd do our hated short hop drill. This was in 12U, never seen so much crying, and whining, and tears and snot in my life. With the occasional knot on a shin or two, we were hated devils!! But you know what, every girl on that team could eat up short hops at the end of 12U! They hated me hitting them grounders cause I could put a ball anywhere I wanted, short hops, line drives, bloopers right behind 1B & 3B bags and perfect balls for the girls to dive for. Dang I miss coaching.....sometimes!
