How do you instill a sense of aggressiveness and confidence in your players?
I have excellent batters, but a very slow, unconfident, intimidated 14U team. They will not hustle for the ball as quickly as they should, do not get their gloves down, and let pop flies die right before them instead of taking the extra two steps to catch it.
Here is what my co-coach and I have tried so far:
1. Teaching the basic fundamentals of fielding and batting (all the way basic as down to the proper stance)
2. Teaching base running skills
3. Working on situations (with and without runners)
4. Going over plays slowly
5. Having the girls identify how to address a certain situation or play themselves and executing it
6. Create a competitive atmosphere for different positions
7. Have the girls vote on captains and have those captains lead team dicussions
8. Take girls aside and talk to them about leading the team
9. Identifying the positive in each game, girl, etc, and then working in things we need to work on
10. Making them run when they give up
11. Teaching a skill, then implementing it in scrimmages
12. Scrimmages in general
13. Coaching them through the mentality of winning
Basically, it comes down to that my girls are all in their head. They keep worrying about messing up or what the other team will do than actually playing well.
What can I do to try to guide them through getting rid of this timid mentality? Any advice would be appreciated.
I have excellent batters, but a very slow, unconfident, intimidated 14U team. They will not hustle for the ball as quickly as they should, do not get their gloves down, and let pop flies die right before them instead of taking the extra two steps to catch it.
Here is what my co-coach and I have tried so far:
1. Teaching the basic fundamentals of fielding and batting (all the way basic as down to the proper stance)
2. Teaching base running skills
3. Working on situations (with and without runners)
4. Going over plays slowly
5. Having the girls identify how to address a certain situation or play themselves and executing it
6. Create a competitive atmosphere for different positions
7. Have the girls vote on captains and have those captains lead team dicussions
8. Take girls aside and talk to them about leading the team
9. Identifying the positive in each game, girl, etc, and then working in things we need to work on
10. Making them run when they give up
11. Teaching a skill, then implementing it in scrimmages
12. Scrimmages in general
13. Coaching them through the mentality of winning
Basically, it comes down to that my girls are all in their head. They keep worrying about messing up or what the other team will do than actually playing well.
What can I do to try to guide them through getting rid of this timid mentality? Any advice would be appreciated.