- Jun 1, 2015
- 501
- 43
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.
This is essentially the reason for wanting to go back and do practices this way. I had 9th graders who couldn't field a basic ground ball and make an out at 1st base, and it cost us so many runs. While I want to go back and blame their modified coaches for not teaching them the other 5 days of the week she had them, I've learned quickly when you point a finger of blame at someone else, 3 fingers point back at you, so it's not worth going that route.
My big concern, as you said, was not making a 2-hour defense (or offense, or base-running, or scenario) practice boring or uninteresting to where they don't pay attention or don't retain what we go over. I'm sure of myself that I can keep the practice engaging - it's just making them aware that doing things this way is for their overall betterment and to better them for the season. If I'm able to keep things consistent like this from practice to practice (just changing the theme from offense to defense to running/sliding to this/that), I think they'll value this more, retain things more (because of the routine format), and it'll become second nature for when we transition to games.