Doubling her and your work, pick a side.
If equal I would go leftly.
Girl who is 8 can hit the ball decent from either side of the plate. She's not fast.
Let her hit from either side and have both improve slowly or work one one and work that side much more?
Thanks all.
I've asked her what feels better, and what she wants to do. She doesn't care. Her parents think being a switch hitter is important. I disagree. While we're working hard to develop skills, we recognize at this age many of the girls will not play softball much longer. We can see the grit, desire and effort of the few on the team who might. Things may change, but my guess is that this particular girl isn't long for softball.
We're a 10U team. We have two lefties already. They tend to ground out to first a lot. As y'all know, grounders to third have a higher OBP at this level.
So we tried her lefty exclusively for over a month. This included a half-dozen practices and about 12 games over 2-3 tournaments. In the last tournament, she looked really tentative and was waiving at the ball. So mid-tournament in a 2-hour break between games, we had her do both off the tee. We invited her parents to the discussion and I explained how I'd rather her get really good at one side than being average at both. And I explained how she didn't look comfortable batting lefty lately and I'd like to try her righty. So we had her hit righty off the tee and the stance and swing both looked better. At least to me. While no pro, my eye is better than her parents.
We reached mutual agreement to play the rest of the tournament with her batting righty, and the stats show she did better. And she looked better.
So I hope this one's put to bed, as her parents aren't exactly the type of parents you enjoy having on your team. They show up late to everything, he comes on the field during warm-ups which isn't welcome, he comes into the dug out during games, and they dress her wrong for practices and such.