Practice Quality vs. Quantity

[gdc03120]

Background Info: 16U "rec"-level team/league (summertime - May through July) - 1 coach (me *) - 1 2-hour practice night a week (Sundays)

During my practices, I often try to cover around 3-4 individual topics (since I only meet with my team once a week due to time commitments). However, I found last season that I struggled to ensure that every topic had enough time. After the season ended, my ladies filled out a survey (anonymously) of things they liked, disliked, would change, etc., and one comment nearly across the board was how we didn't have enough time to go over all the things we intended to each week, and that we should focus on fewer things. I was surprised the girls had the same thoughts as me as I never mentioned this to them at all. I wanted to see their unbiased thoughts and I was happy to see they matched.

Personally, I like this idea - having the ability to spend each practice with one general theme (fielding, hitting, situations) would let me focus on fewer topics and give me a chance to spend 2 hours coaching one specific topic (i.e. fielding - infielding, outfielding, double plays, bunting, for example). Each week/practice would then have one theme (I would have about 8-9 practices, maybe up to 10-12) before the season starts that could be separated by topic. I did find many ladies would not remember specific items from week to week, probably due to trying to cover so many things in 2 hours (as a teacher, I should've seen this coming, but failed, and I admit that.)

For the other coaches out there: Have any of you tried a setup like this for practices (one theme/topic per session) and/or what do you think would work best: QUALITY (of topic per practice) or QUANTITY (number of items covered per practice)? Absolutely looking for constructive criticism from the best softball forum on the interwebz.

(* I have been/am searching for an AC but in my area, it's VERY minimal at best. Parents have occasionally stepped in to help when asked but there's no consistency whatsoever. If I were able to get an AC or a consistent parent, then I can do more of each topic with fewer ladies in a group and it can be more individualized, but I always set up for a 1-coach situation [worst case scenario] and proceed from there).

 

[Towny9]

If I only practiced once a week for a short 3 month season I would keep it simple. Warmup for 15 minutes, Take ground balls for 30 minutes, take fly balls for 15, and then hit for an hour. Have the girls in 3 groups for hitting. One group hits, the second group fields, and the third groups takes baserunning reads from second and third base.

 

[Rolling Hard]

Grab the best 2 parents and give them task. Don't do the

"Does anybody want to help?"
Deligate!
You might be surprised how quickly they fall in line. Lead.

 

[quincy]

1 Sunday night practice and no parents will to help consistently?

Cut all your existing players so you can get new parents.

 

[ArmWhip]

If you're going to practice one topic at a time what are you going to leave for last? And I'm not sure they will remember what you went over in the first practice 3-4 weeks down the road. If I was coaching a 16U rec team by myself I would probably do a lot of scrimmaging and use the situations that come up during play for teaching, unless the girls have enough playing experience and know what to do. With two hours a week to practice doing skills work seems pointless. But you're the coach and know what they need to work on the most.

 

[gdc03120]

I definitely appreciate all the information so far - I'll try to respond to everyone in one succinct message:

@Towny9 - I've done something like that in past practices, but it gets hard when I end up having to run a station/group and can't see the other ladies at their own stations. I try to make said stations self-run (meaning the girls can run them on their own) so I can wander, but sometimes they get slightly distracted, etc. Nothing unusual with teenaged girls though. I try arranging the groups so I have one older player with each group and I strongly stress to my older girls to be leaders and help the younger players out - be role models/set examples, so on. I'd say it's successful 3/4s of the time.

@quincy - Easier said than done for sure. Around here, for both youth and HS sports, practices are glorified babysitting services. Drop off and pick-ups are often the only times I see some parents (games are iffy, depending on the parents). It's even worse at the little league/youth levels. I was a LL umpire in our area for 14 years, and it was sad. There were often more PLAYERS than parents at games some nights. I will say this past season I had a GREAT crop of parents in terms of helping with any questions I had (for fundraising or etc.) I had ZERO behavior issues with my ladies. I know I won't have some of said girls/parents back next year (we went 0-12 - rough learning curve), and I'll hopefully pick up some newer players as well.

@ArmWhip - That's what I've been pondering. Our game schedule doesn't begin until the last week of June and I typically start practices the first Sunday of May, so that would give me about 8 Sundays (plus any mid-week practices once schools are out). My thought was to spend MAY practices doing skills and JUNE ones with scrimmage/scenario-type work. This way 4 weeks of skill/drill can then be incorporated into strategy work. It's still very much a work in progress, but I figured fewer topics they will remember over 4 weeks is better than more topics they will forget. The more I could really make the skills stick, then their foundations are more concrete than anything else. Again, still a thought in process.

My main goal, if possible, is to get 2-3 parents to assist each practice more concretely. I had 2-3 parents last year who were my 1B coaches for games because they were available on the evenings but couldn't do Sunday evenings (one was a state cop, one worked 2 jobs TH-SU, etc.). I've got 6 months to figure it out, but I always enjoy getting an early jump when I don't have much going on otherwise.

 

[uncdrew]

It's like food. Quantity over quality every time.

 

[Wildfire]

At 16u rec ball I'd focus on the basics during practice. Above all else emphasize fun.

Where are you at? I'll come help.

 

[gdc03120]

It's like food. Quantity over quality every time.

I'd imagine 10 McDonalds' hamburgers may do more damage for the long-term health of my digestive system compared to one nice, butter-basted, medium-rare steak would.

At 16u rec ball I'd focus on the basics during practice. Above all else emphasize fun.

Where are you at? I'll come help.

That's what I've been thinking. Many of my girls last year (10 of 15) were modified softball players, and sadly the modified coaching in this area is "find a teacher with free time and drag them into doing it". I'm not even joking. I umpired one modified game where 8 of my girls were on one of the mod. teams and I happened to speak to their coach afterward - she only did it because they threatened to ax the team if she didn't because NOBODY ELSE wanted it. So she did what she could. I'd usually find out from 2-3 of the girls that week what they were learning and focus on those skills at Sunday's practice because about 70% of the time they were being taught wrong (not saying I'm a great coach, but some basic skills were being taught totally wrong).

And I'll be 100% honest - I think THAT was my biggest error. I spent too much time trying to fix errors INSTEAD of just teaching the right ways to do things. I would have rather just spent practice doing "back to basics work" so the basic, boring, foundational skills are concrete before moving onto anything flashier (while still making it fun at the same time). This coming season, I want my focus to be more on the skills/foundational abilities (that they weren't being taught successfully), and instead of focusing on "fixing errors", emphasizing "correct motions and movements" so the girls have more confidence in what they do vs. fearing making mistakes.

 

[CoachJD]

If I was coaching a 16U rec team by myself I would probably do a lot of scrimmaging and use the situations that come up during play for teaching, unless the girls have enough playing experience and know what to do. With two hours a week to practice doing skills work seems pointless. But you're the coach and know what they need to work on the most.

From my experience, scrimmages are maybe the worst form of practice for all but the very best players (ones who don't need to learn a lot of new skills).

A scrimmage is 90% of players doing nothing for 90% of the time. You're cutting two hours of practice to maybe 15 minutes of actual practice time for each girl.

To the OP: Rec players need as many reps as possible. Your challenge is to figure out how to keep a practice that's almost entirely defense interesting (don't just hit ground balls at em for two hours). Focus on what they need the most. You can work on double plays and bunt coverages and spend 20 minutes on relays, and all that is worthless if they can't convert routine grounders into outs.

Your general question is if practices that cover fewer topics can be good: Yes. They can. I've recently worked with three different girls one-on-one for an hour each. All we did was infield defense, and I didn't hit a single ground ball at them for the entire hour. We covered so, so much (but not too much). It never got boring. All three couldn't believe the hour was up. And that's just working with one girl at a time. I could easily expand those sessions into a two-hour practice with a full team (of infielders...would need to do something different for OFs).

They won't get bored if you keep them stimulated and you convince them that what they're working on is important. And if they're engaged, they're going to retain more of what you teach.

Oh, and make sure you don't take your own boredom for theirs. I despise hitting infield. I love infield instruction, but I get super bored hitting grounders over and over. I can't tell you how many times I've asked my catcher "Is this getting old? Should we move on?" and they say to keep going.