Practice plans and specifically batting practice

[Mr T]

Soccer is so easy. You have some cones and can run through run game-like drills that all the girls can do together. That is typically all you need.

Softball is so much harder to put together a good practice. I am finding I want my girls to get more live BP. We only have the field to work with, no cage. How do you rotate girls though BP while running other drills and stations?

I suppose the same question applies to pitching if you don't require extra time for pitchers and/or they are not off on their own with personal pitching coaches.

 

[Greenmonsters]

Soccer is so easy. You have some cones and can run through run game-like drills that all the girls can do together. That is typically all you need.

Oh Lord, please take pity on your soccer team!

 

[Mr T]

Oh Lord, please take pity on your soccer team!

Take pity on my softball team. It really is so much easier to run effective soccer drills that are fun.

 

[Amy in AZ.]

Do you have any help? Do you have any tees, etc.? So, do you want about 3 hitting stations going on, while you have fielding practice?
Because I am thinking - Dry swings, would be one. Hitting off a tee, would be two. And using a hitting stick or front toss for bunting, would be 2 other options. I use a variety of balls. If you have to go the cheap route use nerf balls and golf sized whiffles. Hit the whiffles with a dowel rod and that gives you another station.

Are these the kind of ideas that you need?

 

[quincy]

Do you have backstop where you are practicing or just an open field?

 

[Mr T]

There is a big backstop at the field I will get next year. I also have tees. Batting practice just seems to be a black hole in terms of field usage and time. If you give each kid maybe 5 minutes that can take a long time. I am wondering if others just do it in the outfield? I have a lot of help Amy, so in the past I've done stations like you say. The issues I've run into are usually along these lines:

* Impossible to sync batter with all the stations, just relax and realize everyone won't do all stations

* Helpers tend to over-coach and give extra BP to kids. It's critical to stay on time or BP devolves into endless time hole

* field usage

* girl pitch can start to have too many balls (and occasionally hit batters), coach pitch perhaps not realistic enough but we ended up going with coaches throwing fairly fast pitches

* BP for say 12 girls 5 min each can obviously run a whole hour, sometimes limiting possibility of doing things with everyone

 

[Greenmonsters]

Take pity on my softball team. It really is so much easier to run effective soccer drills that are fun.

Sorry and true enough! What age? Makes a big difference as to whether you can trust them to swing bats without an adult "bat policeman" right there to make sure noone gets hurt.

 

[Amy in AZ.]

You need the Total Control Sports balls. Then, a coach can toss them, w/o taking up the entire infield and having 8 girls standing around.

I try to do things in pairs. So, if you are doing the TCB balls, you would toss 6 balls and then, the partner would get 6 balls or whatever.

Yes, it does take time for 12Us to learn to hustle and move on. If they don't, they don't get their turns. Be patient and keep encouraging them to concentrate on what they are doing.

 

[starsnuffer]

You can make lots of games out of batting practice that keeps the team engaged. What age group?

-W

 

[Mr T]

I'll most likely be moving up to 10U with my older one, and dropping in to help my younger one's 8U team from time to time.

@ Amy seems like 100% good reviews of TCB, they are expensive but I'll seriously consider them