Helping daughter with confidence in the outfield

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I have been been doing drills for positioning as an outfielder with dd. She has no glove she has to sprint into position so that she is in a ready to throw posture and the ball has to fall about a foot in front of her foot. I use tennis balls and a raquet because I’m more consistent and she is not scared of getting hit. Then we repeat drill and she catches the tennis balls. My dd is a bracket pitcher and usually plays ss but we practice outfielding to increase tracking skills. If she is a weaker player be happy to be playing and work hard to perfect that position and very soon someone else will be in right field.
 
Mar 26, 2019
82
18
Central Ohio
I feel your pain. My DD has always been one of the star players the last several years. This is her first year on an "A" level team. She has the speed for OF, but catching the ball has been hit and miss. Not as easy in the OF at this level. My husband works with her on the side doing pop fly drills. He also has her run in a zig zag pattern then throws the ball high in the air for her to catch. It takes a lot of reps and we may need to eventually break down and pay for a defensive coach. Already have a pitching coach and hitting coach, so need to take baby steps. It is the mental part of the game. Hard to teach that part, but when they finally get it, it makes all the hard work worthwhile.
 
Jun 11, 2019
14
3
1) Acknowledge her fears.
2) Develop a plan for her to get better--not an abstract plan of "Oh, I'm going to work harder". A real plan--like "I'm going to take 100 fly balls a day for the next 5 days. I'm going to do it from 6PM to 7PM."
3) *YOU* go buy a fungo bat and a bunch of balls. This shows that *YOU* are confident in her ability, and that you are putting your time and money into this.
4) You may not have the knowledge to teach the position. Find someone who does. She will not get the level of training she needs from the team coaches.

I had 2 kids successfully play college sports. The key? Get your kids the right personal coach--someone who (a) can teach and (b) knows what s/he is doing. Then, you go to the sessions, listen and learn. You spend time with your perfecting what the coach taught them.
This is great - thank you! #2 hits it on the head. We've talked about abstract plans ("I can hit you some balls sometime....we can work on it"), but not a concrete plan like you mentioned. That is a great idea and something that she would take much more seriously and give her something to focus on.
 
Dec 5, 2017
514
63
Juggs Lite Flite balls work great. We've been using them while dd's throwing hand is in a cast and they are very challenging to track. They are so light that they never just fly straight but you can still hit them a long way. They are also soft which is why it's relevant to her having a cast on, don't want it getting hit by a regular ball.
 
Aug 20, 2017
1,475
113
Couple things:

Make sure she has a creep step when ball hits the top of the pitching circle. I’m amazed at watching OFs just stand flat footed as ball is being swung at

Teach her to be fast early. Many players drift early and never get in a good position to catch the ball. Fast early and smooth into the catch
 
Mar 8, 2016
313
63
All the advice you have been given is dead on. Just to give you an example my dd is 6' tall and left handed. Through 14u she played every inning of every game at 1B. She became very good at 1B and the infielders loved her. She got used to people talking about how good she was at 1B. Fast forward to her freshman year of high school and even though she was the best 1B on the team the team was better off with her in LF. She had a total of 3 innings played in the OF prior to that at TB level. It was very hard on her to go from having her defense constantly praised to being weak on defense. She took bad angles and got slow jumps on balls she should have causht. She had a good bat so they were going to find a place to play her. In one early game of her freshman year she actually circled around a deep fly ball only to watch it fall 4' to the side of her. She was 2 for 3 at the time with a double and HR. The coach still replaced her in the OF the next inning.
We went out and I hit balls to her just as everyone has recommended. We did it over and over again. She now plays OF for her TB team and CF for her HS team. She wanted to get better and was willing to put in the work. It was painful and took a lot of work. It is also great fun to get to work with her on a regular basis.
On her TB team the regular RF saves more runs than any girl on the team by the balls she gets to in the gap. Cody Bellinger the Dodger RF has more defensive runs saved than any player in MLB. At the level she is playing at you cannot hide a player. Every position is important.
 
Apr 2, 2015
1,198
113
Woodstock, man
You need to hit her fly balls that curve to the right. Hitting dead-on balls won't help her.

Use a hitting aid or a pitching machine if you need to.

Also, learn to catch balls on the run (don't catch flat footed), so she can get two outs.

She needs to be doing long toss so she can throw people out at home.
 

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