Allotted Time For Catcher's During Team's Practice

[1st_&_3rd]

I'm hoping the forum members experiences can help me out here.

What amount of time, if any, do most travel teams give to specific catcher's skills during team practices? Not counting catching for pitchers while they warm up or catching while doing infield situational work. Specifically time for doing blocking drills, pop up practice, throw downs to 1st, 2nd, 3rd, working on receiving, etc. Would 15 or 20 minutes of 1 1/2 hour practice be acceptable?

I've only been exposed to a few different teams in the last couple of years so I'm not sure what's the prevailing practice of most travel teams.

 

[SoCalDad]

During TB team practice I do not allocate any time for catcher and pitchers. Catchers and pitchers have seperate practices during the week plus the private practices with their respectice coaches.

 

[sru]

My DD's team has seperate pitcher/catcher practices where where the coaches focus only on those two positions. This is when the catchers get their instruction on blocking,framing,strategy etc. A few hours per month is ussually all we get on the field for practicing throw downs, popups etc.. We had different coaches last year which didn't give the catchers any seperate instruction. It bothered me to no end as our teams 3 catchers where there only to catch for the pitchers.

 

[absdad]

I think the best is to hold seperate practices. If that's not possible, catchers warming up pitchers for 20 minutes is not "practice" by any stretch of the imagination. If you cannot hold another practice for them, I'd at least spend 30 minutes on blocking, framing, throwdowns, and strategy with the catchers alone. And I'd work with the pitchers covering home, with the catchers... god that is soo overlooked. You could always have pitchers and catchers come 30 minutes early, work their stuff, then have the whole team for batting practice, then fielders only for fielding practice; covering everyone. If you did this over 2 hours, you'd have each group for no more than 1 1/2 hours.

 

[SnocatzDad]

Catcher's do have seperate practice outside team practice, but we also make the "team" practice throwdowns (i.e. pickoff's steal attempts) I think it's important to as a team to practice throwing and receiving those throws and moving to a receiving position for the throw. Not sure why you would practice fielding infield and not practice fielding the catcher position. I have seen probably 30 HS teams do pregame infield and without exception they all practice turning double plays every which way they can occur and almost all skip practicing pickoff's and throwdowns in their pregame. Last time I checked there are at least 10 (maybe 100) outs made by the catcher for every double play that is turned by the infield.

 

[SoCalDad]

During my team TB practices we do have infield drills where the catchers practice throw-downs/steals/double plays with the infielders. I do not consider this alloted time as defined in the original posting for catchers as this is a team exercise.

 

[jlambert]

i give about 20 to the catchers at the end of each practice. i line my team up on first, have the pitcher pitch to the catcher, catcher then makes throwdown on runners going to 2nd. short stop starts in her spot and then covers 2nd base on the throw. we get a lil throwdown time and my base runners get steal practice....works out pretty good... then we end practice on a good note....

 

[softball_chic_12]

we usually get about 15 mins unless we tell the coach we want to work more on something specifically