- Jan 22, 2011
- 1,473
- 113
Bob Burnett asked me last week for some thoughts on how to develop a strong 8u program. In honor of this weekend being his daughter's memorial tournament, I've compiled what I helped an excellent group of volunteers pull off over 12 years. Home | Mbfoundation (meghanburnettfoundation.org) Fly High!
1) Started developing catchers my first 8u practice. Spent ~5 minutes with each girl teaching them the basic catchers crouch/receiving and l would pitch lite flight balls to them. You never know who has ability to be a catcher. (www.catchingcamp.com). Every one caught at least 2 innings over the course of the rec season. Even though 8u All-Star rules back then didn't allow stealing, our first tournament allowed girls to "steal" if the ball got behind the catcher. My basic work with catchers allowed them to mostly keep the ball in front of them. We won it. Thank you @Eric F for pointing me in the direction of excellent catching resources 8 years ago!
2) Give every girl the chance to pitch. Work with them all some. My league rules limited each girl to pitching 2 innings a game. My daughter only pitched 1 inning every other game in 8u (1 game she pitched 2). I had an Irish girl named Caoimhe (kee-va) who had natural IR who only played one year. One of my fondest 8u memories was her Dad coming up to me after she pitched and saying 'Caoimhe was disappointed she only pitched to 3 batters that inning' . Pitching Videos | Pitching Lessons | House of Pitching helped me learn the basics. If only I had heard of Rick Pauly and Rich Balswick two years earlier. Pauly Girl Fastpitch – High Performance Pitching Fastpitch Foundations – Softball Pitching Instruction Watch | Facebook I've heard very good things about where Meghan taught pitching (https://www.planetfastpitch.com/)... a buddy from California who grew up in Mass told me at one point he was thinking about bringing his 8 year old there for a week to take lessons there. We had alumni coaches and high school players who were good pitchers helped run a pitching clinic for 8u and beginning 10u players. Try to encourage some of your HS pitchers to give lessons to younger pitchers for say $20 a lesson.
3) My daughter naturally threw with good form because she watched softball played for the first 5 years of her life. I would of helped more girls if I had heard of Austin Wasserman three years earlier. Home - High Level Throwing -.
High Level Throwing With Austin Wasserman Webinar - YouTube In 2015 or 2016 Austin agreed to sell me his e-book for $10 or $20 a copy and I bought one for each of our Summer Star and All-Star coaches.
4) Have coaches play catch with the girls with lite flight balls until they get confidence. Teach them the 'clock theory' about point their thumb to the clock position with their belly button the center of the clock.
5) Watch Big Al Baseball's videos.... one or two years we paid for the whole league to get access to his material... even the parents. When he came out to give a coaches clinic to the Little League coaches one year, we had him give a coaches clinic for our softball league. Home (bigalbaseball.com)
6) Keep it fun. I question some of the fundamentals taught, but Canada does it right. Until I convinced the league to spend the money on Big Al Baseball, I bought the 6u and 8u coaches 'The Learn to Play' books out of my pocket for 3 or 4 years. Keep it fun. They have a new program called 'Timbits Softball' which I assume is a new and improved version. https://softball.ca/programs/timbits-softball
7) Human Kinetics books are great. Also has coach education. Never did implement it, but I consider making it a requirement for All-Star coaches to take the fundamentals of coaching class. Human Kinetics Coach Education Consider bringing in Positive coaching alliance every other year. They have online classes as well: Positive Coaching Alliance – PCA – Youth Sports Training - PCA
8) Mike Candrea USA softball videos. Little league has some good coaching education material for softball. I haven't looked at it in 3 or 4 years: Coaches - Little League
9) Worked out deal with Right View Pro one year to get the video they used to sell in Little League store for ~$10 each at a discount on USB stick to give to our coaches. 23 video clips of hitting instruction by Mike Candrea and Sue Enquist. About 5 years ago I had two long phone conversations with Don Slaught. There is an app I bought for my phone a couple years ago. I haven't looked closely at their structure lately, but RVP seems to have a league license: Right View Pro
10) Develop a relationship with your local High Schools, JUCOs, and travel teams (need to be careful they don't poach your players) to come out and give clinics. We never fully implemented it, but I wanted to implement something like AYSO soccer does to have experienced coaches to come out and help run practices. Maybe try to get High School players and good coaches whose daughters have aged out to come out and help run practices for 6u-8u the first couple Saturdays before you start playing games.
11) Develop a youth umpire program where girls umpire 8u and 10u games. Rule of thumb is they have to be 4 years older than the division they are umpiring. IE 12 year olds can umpire 8u games, 14 years old can umpire 10u. Younger girls love see older girls umpiring their games.... and it helps the older girls learn the game. Local umpire associations are likely willing to provide training for youth umpires.
12) Good material on fundamentals of coaching, 1st aid, dealing with parents, at the NFHS: NFHS Learn | Interscholastic Education, Made Easy Consider buying at least 1 membership to the NFCA for your league to get access to their 'Coaches Box'. https://nfca.org/ NFCA membership also gets you a discount with Bownet and other vendors.
13) Our league couldn't get much field space for a developmental Fall Ball program, so we implemented a 6 week summer fall ball program we called 'Summer Stars' where we brought in outside coaches to help run practices, teach some skills, a couple pitching clinics, etc. Gave us a deeper pool of experienced coaches, gave the girls who wanted to learn more about softball but not do summer tournament ball a chance to keep playing and improving. Girls played division they would play the next spring. Had cohorts of 24-28 girls that practiced together with 4-6 coaches, divided into two equal teams that varied weekend to weekend for a Saturday game. Gave youth umpires a chance to earn some more money. Brought in HS girls to help run practices (let them earn a little spending money). Not sure if they still do it, but for a couple years other rec leagues in our county banded together and did something similar for their non-tournament fall ball program.
14) Read @Ken Krause Krause 's excellent blog on softball: Life in the Fastpitch Lane | Thoughts, ideas and musings on fastpitch softball (softballsuccess.com) IOMT Castaways forever!
15) I truly believe you shouldn't coach unless you love your players. A couple resources:
Amazon.com: Lead . . . for God's Sake!: A Parable for Finding the Heart of Leadership eBook: Gongwer, Todd G. , Meyer, Urban, Meyer, Urban: Kindle Store
3D Coach: Capturing the Heart Behind the Jersey (Heart of a Coach) - Kindle edition by Duke, Jeff, Bonham, Chad, Bowden, Bobby, Bowden, Tommy. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com
3D Institute
16) Try to end every practice with a fun 10 minute drill/competition.
1) Started developing catchers my first 8u practice. Spent ~5 minutes with each girl teaching them the basic catchers crouch/receiving and l would pitch lite flight balls to them. You never know who has ability to be a catcher. (www.catchingcamp.com). Every one caught at least 2 innings over the course of the rec season. Even though 8u All-Star rules back then didn't allow stealing, our first tournament allowed girls to "steal" if the ball got behind the catcher. My basic work with catchers allowed them to mostly keep the ball in front of them. We won it. Thank you @Eric F for pointing me in the direction of excellent catching resources 8 years ago!
2) Give every girl the chance to pitch. Work with them all some. My league rules limited each girl to pitching 2 innings a game. My daughter only pitched 1 inning every other game in 8u (1 game she pitched 2). I had an Irish girl named Caoimhe (kee-va) who had natural IR who only played one year. One of my fondest 8u memories was her Dad coming up to me after she pitched and saying 'Caoimhe was disappointed she only pitched to 3 batters that inning' . Pitching Videos | Pitching Lessons | House of Pitching helped me learn the basics. If only I had heard of Rick Pauly and Rich Balswick two years earlier. Pauly Girl Fastpitch – High Performance Pitching Fastpitch Foundations – Softball Pitching Instruction Watch | Facebook I've heard very good things about where Meghan taught pitching (https://www.planetfastpitch.com/)... a buddy from California who grew up in Mass told me at one point he was thinking about bringing his 8 year old there for a week to take lessons there. We had alumni coaches and high school players who were good pitchers helped run a pitching clinic for 8u and beginning 10u players. Try to encourage some of your HS pitchers to give lessons to younger pitchers for say $20 a lesson.
3) My daughter naturally threw with good form because she watched softball played for the first 5 years of her life. I would of helped more girls if I had heard of Austin Wasserman three years earlier. Home - High Level Throwing -.
High Level Throwing With Austin Wasserman Webinar - YouTube In 2015 or 2016 Austin agreed to sell me his e-book for $10 or $20 a copy and I bought one for each of our Summer Star and All-Star coaches.
4) Have coaches play catch with the girls with lite flight balls until they get confidence. Teach them the 'clock theory' about point their thumb to the clock position with their belly button the center of the clock.
5) Watch Big Al Baseball's videos.... one or two years we paid for the whole league to get access to his material... even the parents. When he came out to give a coaches clinic to the Little League coaches one year, we had him give a coaches clinic for our softball league. Home (bigalbaseball.com)
6) Keep it fun. I question some of the fundamentals taught, but Canada does it right. Until I convinced the league to spend the money on Big Al Baseball, I bought the 6u and 8u coaches 'The Learn to Play' books out of my pocket for 3 or 4 years. Keep it fun. They have a new program called 'Timbits Softball' which I assume is a new and improved version. https://softball.ca/programs/timbits-softball
7) Human Kinetics books are great. Also has coach education. Never did implement it, but I consider making it a requirement for All-Star coaches to take the fundamentals of coaching class. Human Kinetics Coach Education Consider bringing in Positive coaching alliance every other year. They have online classes as well: Positive Coaching Alliance – PCA – Youth Sports Training - PCA
8) Mike Candrea USA softball videos. Little league has some good coaching education material for softball. I haven't looked at it in 3 or 4 years: Coaches - Little League
9) Worked out deal with Right View Pro one year to get the video they used to sell in Little League store for ~$10 each at a discount on USB stick to give to our coaches. 23 video clips of hitting instruction by Mike Candrea and Sue Enquist. About 5 years ago I had two long phone conversations with Don Slaught. There is an app I bought for my phone a couple years ago. I haven't looked closely at their structure lately, but RVP seems to have a league license: Right View Pro
10) Develop a relationship with your local High Schools, JUCOs, and travel teams (need to be careful they don't poach your players) to come out and give clinics. We never fully implemented it, but I wanted to implement something like AYSO soccer does to have experienced coaches to come out and help run practices. Maybe try to get High School players and good coaches whose daughters have aged out to come out and help run practices for 6u-8u the first couple Saturdays before you start playing games.
11) Develop a youth umpire program where girls umpire 8u and 10u games. Rule of thumb is they have to be 4 years older than the division they are umpiring. IE 12 year olds can umpire 8u games, 14 years old can umpire 10u. Younger girls love see older girls umpiring their games.... and it helps the older girls learn the game. Local umpire associations are likely willing to provide training for youth umpires.
12) Good material on fundamentals of coaching, 1st aid, dealing with parents, at the NFHS: NFHS Learn | Interscholastic Education, Made Easy Consider buying at least 1 membership to the NFCA for your league to get access to their 'Coaches Box'. https://nfca.org/ NFCA membership also gets you a discount with Bownet and other vendors.
13) Our league couldn't get much field space for a developmental Fall Ball program, so we implemented a 6 week summer fall ball program we called 'Summer Stars' where we brought in outside coaches to help run practices, teach some skills, a couple pitching clinics, etc. Gave us a deeper pool of experienced coaches, gave the girls who wanted to learn more about softball but not do summer tournament ball a chance to keep playing and improving. Girls played division they would play the next spring. Had cohorts of 24-28 girls that practiced together with 4-6 coaches, divided into two equal teams that varied weekend to weekend for a Saturday game. Gave youth umpires a chance to earn some more money. Brought in HS girls to help run practices (let them earn a little spending money). Not sure if they still do it, but for a couple years other rec leagues in our county banded together and did something similar for their non-tournament fall ball program.
14) Read @Ken Krause Krause 's excellent blog on softball: Life in the Fastpitch Lane | Thoughts, ideas and musings on fastpitch softball (softballsuccess.com) IOMT Castaways forever!
15) I truly believe you shouldn't coach unless you love your players. A couple resources:
Amazon.com: Lead . . . for God's Sake!: A Parable for Finding the Heart of Leadership eBook: Gongwer, Todd G. , Meyer, Urban, Meyer, Urban: Kindle Store
3D Coach: Capturing the Heart Behind the Jersey (Heart of a Coach) - Kindle edition by Duke, Jeff, Bonham, Chad, Bowden, Bobby, Bowden, Tommy. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com
3D Institute
16) Try to end every practice with a fun 10 minute drill/competition.
Last edited:
