The transistion from coach pitch to player pitch

[2 DD Coach]

That sounds like it works well, but why should the girl be out if the coach pitches her four balls? If she has a good enough eye to not swing at those four balls, then she should earn her walk and be allowed on base. I don't agree with that portion of your rules.

You may find this hard to believe, but some coaches even at this age care more about winning games then helping girls to develop. The rule is to keep a coach from coming out and pitching four balls on purpose to walk a girl that he thinks can't hit. Sad, but true. So if you have a batter with no or one strike on her, and two balls from the coach, you tell her to swing away at the next two pitches no matter what. I teach my girls to worry less about the exact strike zone, and more about can they get their bat on the ball if it is a decent pitch, so this usually works.

We also had to institute a no bunting off the coach pitch rule for a similar reason this year.

 

[guero_gordo]

You'd be amazed how many coaches can be harder on their own hitters than opposing pitching. In ours the coach got max 3 to own batter, -1 for every strike the pitcher got over, no walk.
It can be tough to adjust to rainbows coming down from low earth orbit at 85 degrees after tracking a faster, flatter ball released about 18" AGL.
We called some of those coaches "MVP" in those years. :-D


We finished our first year of all girl-pitch 5-6 (grade).
My daughter started out lighting them up and struggled for consistency late in the season.
Hardest thing with her was to get her moving on all pitches, then laying off the bad ones, Yes-Yes-No. Her tendency was to decide late, which won't work against faster pitchers, Wait-Wait-Late.

 

[SEGa]

In my part of Georgia 7-8 and 9-10 are machine pitched..then everyone scrambles to get their DD pitching and working with them to recognize strikes. I have waffled back and forth on this but at this time i like it like this. I as a coach get to focus the young girls on proper swing mechanics and on Fundamental defense.

 

[amanda_cake]

You may find this hard to believe, but some coaches even at this age care more about winning games then helping girls to develop. The rule is to keep a coach from coming out and pitching four balls on purpose to walk a girl that he thinks can't hit. Sad, but true. So if you have a batter with no or one strike on her, and two balls from the coach, you tell her to swing away at the next two pitches no matter what. I teach my girls to worry less about the exact strike zone, and more about can they get their bat on the ball if it is a decent pitch, so this usually works.

We also had to institute a no bunting off the coach pitch rule for a similar reason this year.

Actually, I'm not surprised.

Why doesn't the opposing team's coach relieve his pitcher? I can see where if the batting team's coach is pitching to a weak batter walking would be beneficial, but the opposing team's coach certainly doesn't want to walk anyone.

 

[Goober]

10U travel here, and the (batters) coach comes in to pitch when there are 3 balls. No walks under any circumstances. The player and the coach can strike a girl out (swinging AND looking), but the coach can't walk a batter.

I like it in that it gives the pitcher every chance to strike a girl out, or at least throw strikes. Plus, she isn't demoralized because she walked the entire opposing team. Plus, it forces the batter to swing at strikes, as they will get called out for not swinging at good pitches - even from the coach.

 

[2 DD Coach]

Goober,
What part of the country are you in? In 10u REC out here it's all girl pitch, and there isn't a lot of walks. Just kind of suprised at coach pitch in 10u travel ball.

 

[Goober]

Goober,
What part of the country are you in? In 10u REC out here it's all girl pitch, and there isn't a lot of walks. Just kind of suprised at coach pitch in 10u travel ball.

Northern Minnesota - 4 hours north of the Twin Cities. I call it travel because they had three tourneys this year with two of them on the road. Most of the "season" was spent on practice and scrimmages against the other town team (there are 20 kids, so they split up into two teams)... These two teams (from Bemidji, MN) played teams from Crookston, Red Lake Falls, Fosston, Roseau and "Win-E-Mac." at their tourneys.