DDs new team played second tournament Sat (one day), in one game she had two opportunities to catch extremely short but pretty high pop ups (both were borderline fair foul, betweeen 4-10 feet down 1b line), both pretty high up, so coming down pretty fast. She popped nicely on both and was in position, both hit her mitt, but both came out (wish I had video).
I think what needs to happen is to open up the mitt as much as possible (hard to do for her, smaller hands, and it is a pretty hefty mitt for her, but she needed the protection, AS CMW3000). Second, I think she needs to get the mitt to as little of an angle as possible, ie parallel to ground. it seemed the lip of the web (which is very substantial, and kind of curled in over mitt) was preventing ball from getting all the way into mitt, and it skipped down to the ground. batter reached each time. she felt horrible. coaches handled it well, and it seems one who does most of the work with catchers was showing her exactly what I said above after the inning behind the dugout.
Any other tips and tricks, besides basket catching? she made this play last spring, but that was with 11", I think 12" are not getting into mitt as easy.
I think what needs to happen is to open up the mitt as much as possible (hard to do for her, smaller hands, and it is a pretty hefty mitt for her, but she needed the protection, AS CMW3000). Second, I think she needs to get the mitt to as little of an angle as possible, ie parallel to ground. it seemed the lip of the web (which is very substantial, and kind of curled in over mitt) was preventing ball from getting all the way into mitt, and it skipped down to the ground. batter reached each time. she felt horrible. coaches handled it well, and it seems one who does most of the work with catchers was showing her exactly what I said above after the inning behind the dugout.
Any other tips and tricks, besides basket catching? she made this play last spring, but that was with 11", I think 12" are not getting into mitt as easy.