Organizing Youth Baseball Practice

For the coach youth baseball practice actually begins before you get to the field. You need to plan out what you want to work on and what drills you will use to accomplish your objective. It is advisable to utilize parents and volunteers to help you. If possible you want to be the facilitator who walks around insuring everyone is doing what they need to do.

Youth baseball teams typically are assigned a practice field on certain days for a given time period, so depending on your teams needs and areas they need to work on will determine what your practice plan will consist of. Make sure to write it down and stick to the time allotted.

It is advisable to have the players warm up as a group. I ask two players to volunteer to be the captains for the day. They will lead the stretching and warm up. Once that is done we will move into our throwing routine. The warm up, stretching and throwing routine is consistent before every practice and game. The player's become familiar with it and develops a routine they are comfortable with.

After warming up the following would an example of a normal practice.

•Rundown - Half the players will be on 1st base the other half on 2nd, and a runner in the middle, the runners run with their gloves so as to keep the drill moving. The goal is to keep the drill moving and teach one throw and get the runner out.

•Cutoff & Relay - Break your team into groups, if you have 12 players use three groups of four players. Make sure the players are moving their feet to the ball with their glove side to the target. I use the phrase, step-catch-throw to emphasize quick release of the ball. This is a good opportunity to make a competition between the teams and adds fun to practice as well.

•Individual skills – keeping the same groups as cutoff & relay one group will go to shortstop, another group to second base and a final group to center field. The infield works on ground balls, the outfield works on fly balls. You could have one of the infield groups working on charging slower grounders while the other group fields and makes a strong throw to 1st.

• Group skills – This is where you may work on 1st & 3rd defense, bunt defense, turning double plays, pop fly's, pitchers fielding practice. •Hitting – Like the above we will utilize groups. Most youth baseball fields don't have a cage so to perform live hitting a coach(s) will need to throw on the field.

I have found that putting a screen on home plate and the hitters close to the back stop not only prevents lots of foul balls from leaving the field, but I can have two coaches throwing to two hitters simultaneously. This allows the other two players in the group to be working on the side with soft toss and/or tee drills.

I have one group shagging in the outfield, and one group fielding ground balls hit by helpers in the infield.

Another option you could do is have one group throwing a bullpen during this time.

This method of taking BP makes hitting practice efficient and productive, and the kids aren't bored.

I finish practice with a base running drill. It may be step-by-step instruction or it may be a drill they like and have done before.

This type practice will typically last two hours. It encompasses a lot of instruction and repetitions. I look at practice as my time and games as the players time to show the world what they have learned.

The biggest thing for the coach is too organized. Save your practice plan as you may want to use it or a similar version later in the season.

by Thomas

Tom has been coaching youth baseball for the past 20 years. LeftHandedBaseballGloves.com is a site designed to offer quality baseball gloves. Tom's blog is dedicated to offer coaching idea's for the volunteer baseball coach.

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Are We Raising Cry Baby Athletes?

Are We Raising Cry Baby Athletes?

By Guest Author Jim Bain

Unfortunately, with my age and schedule I don't have the time to watch little league baseball like I wish. So when the neighbors invited my wife and I to go to their twelve year old grandson's baseball game, we both jumped at the chance.

I almost wish I hadn't went. It'd be totally unfair to judge the state of our young athletes by what I saw at one ball game, but I was shocked at what I witnessed from the players of both teams.

By twelve years old players should be coming to terms with the basics of fielding, hitting and running, but that is not what I saw. Although the opposing team seemed to be the better coached team, most of their quality efforts were the skills of the individual players.

You're probably thinking "lighten up buddy, these teams may have been thrown together from the remnants of non-drafted players." I wish that were true, but this was a playoff game between undefeated and once defeated teams.

I was not impressed with the quality of coaching from either dugout, as there was little coaching to be impressed about. In order to give the coaches the benefit of the doubt, I can see the reasoning, although I strongly disagree, with being a hardnosed coach during practices, then sit back at the game and see how well the kids have learned. Idiotic reasoning.

If you're thinking "I thought this was an article on the players, not lousy coaches," you were not wrong. Just wanted to set the scenario for you.

We all know the regulation strike zone called out in the rule book, but we also know each umpire has his own strike zone. This particular home plate umpire had a low strike zone, which I agree with, but that doesn't matter. What matters is the zone was called consistently and equally for both teams. You can not ask for anything any better from a plate umpire.

I guess it was the bottom of the second inning when what I began seeing astonished me. Despite a strike zone being firmly established, most players would stand and watch two called strike pitches go by without attempting a swing, which is not necessarily unusual.

What was unusual, and in my opinion totally unacceptable, was the players would either argue the call, or clearly demonstrate their disagreement with the call with their body language. These are 12 year old kids arguing with, or trying to show up an adult umpire over called strikes and nobody did anything about it.

I was stunned, but the worse was yet to come. If the batter swung and missed the third strike, he'd stand at the plate showing his disgust. Then he'd walk slowly to the dugout with an assortment of different actions from different players.

Some would jog back to the dugout and sit down, some would throw their batting helmets to the ground, some mumbled under their breath, and by this point I was convinced they were curse words. If this had been an isolated incident it'd be no big deal, but this type of situation played out at least a dozen times during the game.

My wife recognized I wanted to leave, but vetoed the idea as not polite. Then... then the ultimate shock. I had to do a double take because I'd never seen anything like this before, but I saw several batters, these are twelve year old players, returning from striking out with tears running down their cheeks.

I noticed a player sniffling returning to the dugout after being thrown out attempting to steal second base, which bled into another issue. I stood there, I could no longer sit, and watched one runner after another either be thrown out on the base paths, or end up at second on a ball hit off the fence and misplayed by the outfielder.

I turned to my wife and asked her if it was me or did the runners appear to be running in slow motion. Seeing some rabbits round the bases from both sides I decided it wasn't me, these kids literally didn't know how to run.

My wife knew I was confounded by my silence in the truck and answered my unasked question. We are raising a generation which success is not only expected, but owed them. Their game playing, by whatever medium, has replaced or hindered the development of basic skills, such as running.

I truly believe I'm over-reacting and this is not the general state of little league baseball. Disrespect and the throwing of tantrums by players can not be the norm. Coaches acting like they're... I don't know what, but not coaches, is not the norm.

I felt like Rip-Van-Winkle awaking to an entirely different world. I do hope this was only a dream.

Jim Bain, former Minor league baseball player and member of "Baseball Coaches of America" shares his advice on baseball coaching baseball drills on his exciting info packed website: http://www.learn-youth-baseball-coaching.com

Be sure to check out his 2 books on Amazon, "The Pitch" and "Season of Pain". Great reading about baseball.

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