4 Simple Tips To Improving Your T-Ball Practices!
Okay, so your son or daughter wants to play T-Ball and you signed up to be a coach. After all how hard could it be! You’ve spent a little time thinking about what practice should look like and are excited for the first day.
Then only to find out it was your worst nightmare. Kids running around everywhere and throwing baseballs all over the place. Sure the kids were having a good time, but you hardly consider it productive.
But wait! Don’t throw the towel in just yet.
In this article I want to share with you several tips I have learned along the way either working with other coaches or my own experiences.
1. Change your Expectation!
I know when I first started coaching my sons team I thought this will be a piece of cake. I’ll just put kids in positions and ill be able to take infield. Then I realized that wasn’t going to happen. I found out that I needed to start with a new perspective.
If you thought T-Ball was going to look anything like real baseball, then you may need to change your perspective also. Sure you may have a kid who works with his dad at home on catching and throwing, but with most kids this may be their first time on a baseball field.
Some kids may not even know which hand they put the glove on let alone how to field a ground ball and throw to first. As a coach your responsibility is to show kids how to build the fundamentals of the game while having fun.
So this will include showing them the beginner techniques of throwing, hitting and fielding. Breaking each one down into its simplest form will be the easiest for them to understand and start to perform.
You’ll be most productive breaking up into smaller groups or stations. Each station can work on a different skill or they can all work on the same skill.
Okay, now that you have changed your perspective, you can come up with a way to move forward.
2. Formulate a Plan!
Benjamin Franklin once said, “By Failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
Before your next practice, sit down and take 30 minutes to make a list of a few fundamental drills to work on. Now remember these drill will need to be in their simplest forms.
Here is a few examples to get you started.
- Playing catch with a coach
- Hitting off a tee
- Working on grounders
- Base running
Now, obviously these drills will change or become more complex as your players become more confident and their skills progress. Playing catch with a coach will turn into two players playing catch. Slow rollers will turn into fielding a ball and throwing to first base . And so on.
This will take sometime, but you will be surprise at how fast some of the skills will catch on.
3. Find Help!
You might have the best baseball knowledge and ideas, but if you can’t keep 12 extremely excited 4 and 5 year olds engaged, your in trouble. It will be in your best interest for your sanity and for the progress of your players to find some help on the field.
Most leagues barely have enough parents willing to sign up to be coaches let alone assistant coaches. Don’t be embarrassed to ask your parents for some help on the field for the season.
Trust me, you thank me later.
Hopefully you’ll have one, two or even three parents who will step up and volunteer. If not your going to have to just tell them to help you.
Maybe you’ll be even fortunate to have some with some baseball background. They may have not played professionally or even collegiately, but maybe at the high school level.
Next, explain to them what you aim to do during practice. Tell them they will need to take a group of 3 to 6 kids (depending how many coaches you have) and work on a certain skill.
You may have to run them through the drills one time so they can get what you are trying to accomplish. Or, there are plenty of YouTube videos explaining different drills, if you don’t have time before your next team practice.
You will find out once you have a few assistant coaches and they start to understand how to work with the kids the practices will become easier. Soon you will be able to just tell each one what you would like them to work on and then they can handle it.
This is where you will start to see everything coming together and you can really focus on how to make your players better.
4. Equipement!
Great, now that you’ve put your coaching staff together and formulated a plan. Its time to get the right tools for the job.
Most leagues will furnish you some baseballs, a batting tee and maybe some catchers gear. Luckily for you there is tons of equipment available at a relatively low cost and you don’t need to get it all at one time.
You can drive to your local sporting goods store or order them online and receive them almost the next day.
A few ideas to start with would be.
- Baseballs: You can’t ever have to many baseball. You’ll find out the dozen baseballs they give you for practice won’t go far when you have 3 or for stations going on at the same time.
- Batting tee: Lets say you have one tee and your trying to get all the kids some swings. This can take most of the practice and they may only get a handful of them. Lets get a second tee and now you can have kids getting more swings and in less time.
- Portable net: These are great so your not tearing up your baseballs hitting them into the fence. Sure you could just hit them to some of the players fielding the balls but, that can get out of hand fast.
- Cones: These are good because you can put down on the ground to show players where you want them to stand.
- Throw down bases: You’ll hopefully have a field with bases to work on but maybe your league only has a low number of fields. maybe you have to practice on a soccer field for a little while. Also having another set of bases can let you focus on fielding even more closely.
I could go on and on. I can’t stress how important having the right equipment can allow you to get in good quality reps that kids can build on.
Final Thoughts.
At the end of the day you’re trying to let kids have fun while learning the fundamentals of the game. Hopefully one or more of these tips can help eliminate some of the stresses of coaching T-ball and make you a better coach.
Sure you’ll have moments where you feel you have it all together and others where you feel like everything is falling apart. Yes, you will have to re-evaluate your plan, drills and techniques as your team progresses.
But thats why you wanted to coach, to see them improve….Right?
You’ll know that your plans and techniques are working when your players come to practice with a big smiles on their faces. And, even better when they ask for you next season.
