The % of people at a young age taking lessons is incredibly low. My advice is a Pre-season pitching clinic. Have a pitching instructor come in and teach for an hour or so. They can gain young clients and the pitchers have some idea how to do it. Will it make girls pitch well in that time frame? absolutely not. But if two or three of them start taking lessons because of it, it's a win.
Wanted: A Better Strategy for Developing Young Pitchers
- Thread starter Ken Krause
- Start date
Welcome to Discuss Fastpitch
Your FREE Account is waiting to the Best Softball Community on the Web.
I wonder if they did more pitching clinics for coaches as well, if that would be effective. Teach the 8u/10u coaches the basics of pitching enough to help get girls started. Obviously as they get more advanced they would need an actual pitching coach. But it would be nice if more coaches knew the basics to help girls get started. I have sat on a bucket through enough lessons I feel confident helping young pitchers but leave the advanced stuff to the professionals.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
In my experience a lot of 8 and 9 year olds are not ready to learn good pitching mechanics. Attention issues are common and I also think they need to reach a certain threshold in body awareness (proprioception, kinesthesia).
Hmmm...this may sound silly, but a few rounds of "Simon Sez" may help identify which kids are more ready than others to learn mechanics...
At the end of the summer I volunteered to help with the pitching for a local 10U startup for a travel organization. I knew the parents of some of the kids. At the first practice the coaches asked who wanted to pitch, 10 of the kids raised their hands. I took them to the side in pairs, I demonstrated 'lock it in' and had the girls throw into a fence while I watched and gave them pointers. I selected 5 of the 10 girls and I went to the first hour of the Saturday practices to work with them. I had to 'cut' one of the girls because she couldn't even handle 'lock it in'. I worked with these 4 girls for 6-7 weeks doing very basic IR drills. All four asked for private lessons, one dropped pitching after 2 weeks. I've had 5 lessons with 2 of the girls, about 8 with the other one. Two of the girls are 9, one is 10. So where do they stand now, not good, they can not reliably reproduce the basic IR arm action which, for me, is the one nonnegotiable in pitching. In years past I have had several other 8-9 year old students with the same issue. This is what makes me think that there is a certain level of physical development that must be reached before a child can learn to pitch.
radness
Possibilities & Opportunities!
- Dec 13, 2019
- 7,270
- 113
To Gunner shotguns original point that I responded to:
Let the pitchers pitch!
I added the benefit that will also be for batters.
I add to that
If you want batters to develop being better at hitting they need to be offered the opportunity to see/hit pitchers that can actually have some sort of control.
Versus the extreme Challenge of standing in the box with really terrible beginner pitching not being able to find the plate.
At least the really good pitchers in young softball give batters the opportunity to swing at something consistent.
in my opinion we should not be limiting and restricting potential we should give potential the ability to grow.
its just perspective.
Notice in Southern California is the restrictions in rec ball is what pushes pitchers to move on to travel ball. Now rec ball is left with very beginners.
Which pretty much makes it super terrible. Pitchers are leaving after 10u. Not even making it to 12u in Rec.
That's what's happened.
Let the pitchers pitch!
I added the benefit that will also be for batters.
This is why
I add to that
If you want batters to develop being better at hitting they need to be offered the opportunity to see/hit pitchers that can actually have some sort of control.
Versus the extreme Challenge of standing in the box with really terrible beginner pitching not being able to find the plate.
At least the really good pitchers in young softball give batters the opportunity to swing at something consistent.
in my opinion we should not be limiting and restricting potential we should give potential the ability to grow.
its just perspective.
Notice in Southern California is the restrictions in rec ball is what pushes pitchers to move on to travel ball. Now rec ball is left with very beginners.
Which pretty much makes it super terrible. Pitchers are leaving after 10u. Not even making it to 12u in Rec.
That's what's happened.
Last edited:
Yeah I have coached for a long time and I call my pitcher's pitching coach and ask what they are working on, what are their struggles, and what terminology they are using to communicate when they are struggling. "finish the pitch, drive through, leg push, ect"
Makes sense. So I wonder if the real solution isn't to delay the kid pitch part of softball until the 12u division? Let 10u continue to be coach pitch or make it machine pitch. I really don't think it would harm the development of either hitters or pitchers for them to not do kid pitch when they are 9 and 10.
- Apr 11, 2016
- 133
- 28
My daughter could pitch to the strike zone since she started pitching at age of 8. There were 6 wanna-be-pitchers on the team, and 5 of them were the coaches' daughters (there were 6 coaches on the team.) My daughter got to pitch an inning once every few weeks, and pitched about 7-20 pitches to end the inning. Then she had to wait her turns again. In the meantime, it was a walkfest with the other pitchers, and a game may get 2 innings at most. We ended up paying for pitching lessons about once every 3 weeks. No reason to pay for lessons when she didn't get to pitch.
She's also a SS. Most teams she's on would either make her the dedicated pitcher or the dedicated SS, but not both. The teams she's on played tons of games, so you'd think the coaches could let her do both, but no. A month ago, we've decided she's done with pitching so she could focus on fielding. I spent way too much time driving her to pitching lessons (an hour away) just for her to either not pitch or pitch way too much.
We hear coaches complain how there aren't enough pitchers around. I'm sure more pitchers would continue to pitch if the coaches listen to what they want to do. Like my daughter, who likes to pitch, also likes playing SS. I am sad she's done with pitching.
She's also a SS. Most teams she's on would either make her the dedicated pitcher or the dedicated SS, but not both. The teams she's on played tons of games, so you'd think the coaches could let her do both, but no. A month ago, we've decided she's done with pitching so she could focus on fielding. I spent way too much time driving her to pitching lessons (an hour away) just for her to either not pitch or pitch way too much.
We hear coaches complain how there aren't enough pitchers around. I'm sure more pitchers would continue to pitch if the coaches listen to what they want to do. Like my daughter, who likes to pitch, also likes playing SS. I am sad she's done with pitching.
Any way you would consider switching teams and not giving up pitching? I get the frustration, but if she throws in the towel, softball loses another trained pitcher. Being on a team with 5 coaches/ coach's kids, I doubt your dd would get BOTH of the highly sought after positions... just saying.
Similar threads
