My frustration

[adm793]

Very Common with 10U. You explanation sounds identical to my daughter last year. She is now in her second year of 10u and has started to find her swing. What helped: We got her in on the plate and taught her to react to the inside pitch. The outside pitch became much easier to hit and now she doesn't sit with the bat on her shoulder. She also learned that getting hit was an easy base. Her confidence is continuing to grow.

 

[djcarter1966]

Very common....just have to get them to focus on swing, swing, swing, stop mentality.

Try and get her to basic check swing every time.

Nothing drives me more crazy than to see a girl strike out watching and she literally never moved in the box, no reach back, no stride forward, no release towards the ball, literally just a statue. Every pitch should involve a stride or at a minimum no pressure/pressure (up and down), load lower half and hands coming back and the beginning of releasing forward, then if you don't like the pitch you stop swinging but your mentality the whole time was SWING.

 

[JJsqueeze]

In my experience it is either caused by fear of being hit like Ken noted or fear of failure. Either way it is solvable with either some work on getting comfortable in the box as Ken described or getting them comfortable with striking out swinging by being a more aggressive hitter like DJ described.

The YES-YES-NO is the key. The mindset of a hitter has got to be "swinging on every pitch" and then simply stopping the swing if they don't like the pitch. It is infinitely better than the approach of looking to see if they like a pitch and then swinging

 

[sluggers]

I lost my temper last night. Here is a little history. ... She has pitched in 8 of those games. She has 7 wins and 1 loss. All great right. Not in my opinion.

...Here is the kicker. She will not swing the bat when she is at the plate.

Is this common for pitchers? She isn't going to ever hit it over the fence I understand but swing the bat and take your chances at singles and doubles.

By the way she is only 10. I don't know how to get her to swing the bat. We talk about it on the way to the game. We agree that if we are up by 4 or more she is going to strike out swinging before taking a walk, but it never happens.

What can I do?

First, congratulations for having the fortitude come here and ask for help. That is really great.

In 50% of the major league baseball games, they don't even let pitchers bat. In the other 50%, the pitchers bat ninth. Do you think that is because pitchers are great hitters?

a) Understand pitching. Pitching is a game within the game of softball. Pitching is an entirely different game than what everyone else on the field is playing. The strategy and requirements for being "good" at pitching are different from that of the other players.

E.g., a pitcher does not have to have good foot speed. On good teams, she doesn't need to be a good fielder. On good teams, pitchers rarely. touch a hit ball. On many teams, good pitchers don't even bat. So, you are making you and your DD upset over nothing.

Since "pitching" is a different game than "softball", it is entirely possible for your DD to love to pitch and not to love the rest of game. She might actually find doing something besides pitching as boring.

My DD#1 (all-conference D1 pitcher) wanted to pitch all the time. She loved pitching. When she was practicing pitching or pitching in a game, she was totally focused. When it came to hitting or fielding, no so much. She "put up" with playing the field and hitting because it was something to do between pitching. To her, a perfect game would be to pitch for both teams. She is a HS coach now, and loves throwing batting practice.

b) Softball is a great game because every position has different requirements. Thus, it takes all different kinds of people to put together a great softball team. It is very American.

c) Exactly how much praise do you want for your DD? She is already the "star" pitcher. So she strikes out? It is possible the problem is with you, not with her.

 

[grcsftbll]

Another thing that helped mine was hitting off a pitching machine at the cage. Her dad started at 45 mph then slowly cranked it up. At 65 mph she was still hitting it. We told her it would be very rare for a 10U pitcher to break 50-55 and now she knows she can hit that speed. So much of it was in her head that just the confidence boost of knowing she could hit those speeds made a big difference. If she can hit 50 mph in the cage, she can hit it at the field.

 

[lhowser]

Lots of good suggestions here. There are many different personalities and each present a different challenges. One suggestion -

Tell her:

1. She will help the team a lot more if she gets hits. That is what we are in this for. To help the team.

2. Getting hits is fun and once you start doing it playing will be so much more fun. Being afraid of anything (the ball, failure etc) is never fun. So the sooner she decides to attack the ball the more fun and confidence she will have.

Then...it's up to her.

 

[FastPitchCat]

DD was also afraid to hit after being hit by a pitch. but that wasn't the worst part. her old TB coach frequently didn't allow her to bat during non-pool games, with a lame excuse that she doesn't hit well enough.

I always told her, how many points are you going to make if you don't shoot that ball? zero. i know it's basketball, but the analogy is similar. in SB you can be walked, but why give that option to someone else? take control. and she did. we moved to another team where the coach was much more fair and DD did get over her fears and started to really swing the bat, hitting her first OTF HR last year.

btw, she pitches too.

 

[mann]

I like all the posts. i was asked to help a while back with some 10u girls, asked if i could help the girls with hitting. I said ok. the two coaches asked if i would be teaching the girls how to use their hips? hands?

A stride? rotational? hands to the ball? squish the bug? swing level? get the picture? NO no no no no no Confused looks followed. I said ATTITUDE. you see, they are VERY CAPABLE of learning this easily. (if you have DDs you will understand). i have my own way, i can share if you like. or come up with your own way.


I Sneak in small mechanics, as they practice attitude.

 

[ANNASDAD]

I always told my DD that hitting, running bases, and scoring runs was her, and the rest of her teammates reward for working hard in the field. "Hey, who wants to go hit"???

 

[commish]

Thanks all for the advise. My daughter is definitely not scared of the ball. She will not lean into them but she will not move to get out of the way. She figures if she gets hit then she is on base.

I do like the idea to load up before she knows if it is a ball or a strike. She does not do this. That way her first thought is to swing not to take. She can still take the pitch but you know she is looking to hit.

She isn't a bad hitter in hitting lessons. She hits great at home in the basement. She can hit but like someone said I think she is afraid to fail. On the mound if she makes a mistake she knows she can just strike out the next ones. She needs that confidence at the plate. I missed hitting that one but the next one I will hit to the outfield.