How fast to first base?
- Thread starter AdamTheSoftballDad
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- Feb 15, 2016
- 273
- 18
Speed training is important for anyone. How many times does a player get thrown out by half a step at first? If a player is 3.7 home to first and she can improve to 3.5 home to first she will get more hits, advance more bases, and score more runs. She will also probably get to more balls on defense. If she is 3.1 and improves to 2.9 same thing. Why wouldn't a player want to be faster? She doesn't have to be fast but she can be faster than she currently is.
- Jun 8, 2016
- 16,118
- 113
Fast to first:
Whatever time beats the incoming throw. If you're not getting thrown out running from Home to 2B, your time is "good".
I have a kid on my team who somehow gets herself on the pitcher side of the line between first and second. She literally has to stop and make a 90 degree pivot to head to 3rd.
BigSkyHi
All I know is I don't know
- Jan 13, 2020
- 1,385
- 113
1st step issue? Picking up 3rd base coach too soon? Same thing running 2nd to 3rd?
- Feb 13, 2020
- 70
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I’m not sure if anyone will be able to beat this. My youngest DD (16) had some trouble bunting.
Time her with an hourglass
- Feb 13, 2020
- 70
- 18
I’m sure even with an hourglass some of the parents on this team would be able to fudge the numbers to make it look likeDD ran a 2.5. We had one parent tell us her daughter ran a 2.8-2.9 and then the girl proceeded to run like a 3.4 when we video timed her. The sad thing was this mom had convinced her daughter she ran a 2.8 and that she was a bolt of lightning. The girl could bunt beautifully and was a pretty good slap hitter but we knew she would be too slow to beat out the hits. We offered to do some speed training with her or teach her how to hit for power but she refused both and decided to tryout for different teams. The girl also had like 1-3 steals on her last team (I can’t remember exactly) and had a terrible steal percentage and low batting average so we knew it wasn’t just a bad day.
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Some time back in 2004/2005 I went to a Stanford coaching clinic put on by John Rittman who, at the time, was an assistant coach for the women's national team. Someone in our group asked him what home to 1st time he wanted to see for a player to be a slapper on his team. He said he needed to see around 2.8 for his player to be a legit small ball threat. He then lamented, due to the extremely high academic standard of Stanford, he was not able to get "real speed" like he had on the national team. He said the speedsters on the national team were in the 2.6 range. To put this into perspective, a local league MVP a few years back batted over .650 her senior year partly because she was "very fast" by our local standards. She was consistently timed at 2.9. Most average speed 16U/18U players in our area are around 3.1.
