Practice Suggestions for Younger Players

Practice Makes Perfect

 Suggestions for Younger Players….

Most children are playing for the first time; therefore their skill level is elementary. They want to learn. They are eager to play. Don’t expect to mold one of them into a Derek Jeter. That will take a few years. Teach them the basic skills. Teach them the basics of the game. Make sure they have fun. Do all that, and we’ll see them back no matter how the team fares. The use of drills to teach basic skills will greatly improve your players.  But remember, a practice filled with drills may be a child’s last practice. Make it fun. Make it exciting. Show them how much they improved. Encourage, cajole, praise. Some of us have been doing this for a while, and have learned some tips along the way. Unlike our children, we share. If that means you develop players good enough to beat our teams, we’re happy.

1)      Throwing- Be aware, some of the children may not know which hand they use.  Take the glove off the child. Put a ball down in front of him/her, back away a bit. Ask him/her to pick the ball up and throw it to you. Let nature take its course. Repeat the process five times. You now know with which hand nature has decided she/he should throw. If the glove is wrong, break it to the parent gently. They should have a 10 ½ to 11 inch mitt at this age.  The next thing is to make sure the feet and hands move in the appropriate direction. You know that she should step with the foot opposite to the hand she uses. Once this is done properly you can work on the correct throwing motion.   A good drill for proper throwing is to have the child reach behind him/her, arm fully extended as if petting a dog (palm down).  Then, have him/her move the arm up, into an “L” position with the elbow parallel to the ground.  From this point, have him/her extend the arm till the fingers are directly in front of the nose (arm fully extended).  Lining up your players in front of a fence and repeating this drill is an effective way of teaching this. 

2)      Catching-What generally needs to be worked on is the positioning of the glove.  Using the belly button as a point of reference, have them hold the glove palm up if the ball is below belly button level.  If it is above that level, have them hold the glove palm facing the thrower. Teach them the importance of using two hands, and of squeezing the ball with the glove. When the ball hitshim/ her in the face or trunk, point out that it doesn’t hurt if he/she uses the glove. 

3)      Catching a ground ball-What I stress is glove down (on the ground; get the glove dirty) head down (looking at the ball), butt down (It makes them bend their knees). The first time you tell them to get the butt down, there will b a lot of giggles. Also the second and third times. But eventually the notion will stick. But it will have to be repeated.   A fun drill to practice this is putting the children in a circle and using both hands (no glove) and having them slap the ball back and forth to each other.  You can turn this into a game by giving a child a point if he/she stops the ball.  Most points gets to bat first. Some use negative points, with an elimination from the circle. This is also a good method, but results in a number of children sitting around doing nothing while waiting for the circle to empty completely. 

4)      Hitting-The first thing to be learned is proper holding of the bat.  The middle knuckles of the top hand should line up with the first knuckles of the bottom hand. This is best learned by teaching them how to pick up the bat. Teach them to put the bat in front of them, and shake hands with the bat.  The hands should be held at about. ear level.  The back elbow should be parallel to the ground and the front elbow tucked in.  This is not the only positioning of the elbows as an inverted “V” (Jeter’s stance) is also being taught as correct positioning.  Tuck the chin on the front shoulder.  Stress that they swing level.

     Remember-make practice fun and a positive learning experience.

We am sorry if some cases we don’t paint a perfect word picture.  Any questions. please email us at info@teaneckbaseball.org and we will do our best to answer you.