Basketball...?

We spent an hour of practice playing basketball. I decided to make conditioning a little fun today and what better way to do that then to trick the kids in to running more than they ever knew they could? The second half of practice was spent practicing pitching. One of my catchers forgot their glove at home so we were down a catcher. I separated the kids in to groups of "rarely pitch," "sometimes pitch," and "always pitch." I didn't tell them that but I didn't want my main pitchers to be paired up with somebody as talented at pitching as them. We did that for another hour and thus practice was concluded.

651...

Sunday was all about hitting. As usual, the kids did their warm ups and the ones who haven't been showing up on Sundays still aren't showing up. Last Sunday I wasn't there so the other Head Coach decided to just do mechanics based drills and situational hitting. I decided to have them just swing. Swing as much as their little hearts desire. They enjoyed it, the parents enjoyed it, the other coaches enjoyed and even I enjoyed it; the only thing that did't enjoy it was my arm. I threw a total of 651 pitches that Sunday. My arm was going crazy on the inside. Part of me was excited to throw again and then the other part of me was shaking from the pain. Anyways, successful practice!

"Kill It!"

Tuesday's practice went very well. We started off with conditioning instead of jumping in to throwing. I did that for two reasons: firstly, so the kids would pay more attention to the rest of practice having already gotten the running and such out of the way and now they won't be thinking about it. Secondly, because I had a lot planned and I wanted to make sure we got all of it done.
The running lasted about twenty minutes and the players were actually voting towards doing running and such before practice even starts. I have an older infielder named Will who shows leadership and overall solid skill. I frequently use him for examples and he normally is very good at picking up on new drills and staying on his teammates. So I had him lead the infielders with their drills. While he was doing that, I talked to my outfielders and started them off with drills. Keep in mind that we haven't played catch yet so there was not much throwing at all.
Our throwing drills went by rather fast and the boys were much more accurate this time around. I showed them a new drill to work on and made them aware that we would be doing this every practice. It's called the four corners drill. I'll post a link to it at the bottom of the blog to show you what it is. Otherwise noting, I do vary my drills and throw in my own twists, but much like a magician not revealing his secrets, as a coach, I can not reveal my own.
After throwing I had the infielders do rapid fielding. Where they field, throw, and get the hell out of the way or they get hit by the next ball. This keeps them on their toes and keeps them mentally focused. If they weren't mentally focused, then they would get nailed by the ball. My outfielders worked on "killing" the ball on the ground. To explain that, as an outfielder, one of your primary jobs is to not let a ball get by you. As an infielder that's your job too but outfielders don't have another set of fielders behind them if it gets by them. So they worked on stopping the ball at all costs and then worked on rolling balls when there is a play at the plate.

This practice I really wanted to focus on the mental side of the game. As a kid growing up, when it came to base running, I excelled. Not because I was fast though, I was the speed of a broken down tricycle with only one wheel. However, I was very smart on the base paths. To the point where I could physically walk to the next base between pitches and nobody would notice. I want my players to not know just how to play their position, I want them to know why they play their position and to be able to make the necessary adjustments without me or another coach telling them to.

Skip.

I was unable to make it to practice on Sunday. I was stuck in meetings all day and was held up at work. Be on the lookout for my next post!

Cupcakes!

First things first, Happy Valentine's Day to everybody. On our Tuesday practice indoors, we had a parent bring cupcakes for everybody. There were strawberry, vanilla, chocolate, and neapolitan cupcakes available to try. I had one of each... and enjoyed every last bite.

Now that the important stuff has been addressed, time for some baseball talk. I had the boys compete in quite a bit of accuracy games because their accuracy is still rather poor as a whole unit. We did some tee work with tennis balls but instead of hitting the balls in to a net, I let them hit the entire length of the gym so they could truly see where their balls were going. It was a fun drill for them and it also let me know where their tendencies lie. We did quite a bit of running and agility work because we didn't do much running at our outside practice on Saturday. We ended the practice with races and an ab competition of who can hold the plank the longest. 

All in all, the mix of long distance tee work, accuracy drills, races, ab competitions and cupcakes, this was my favorite practice to date.

Photo found on Google.

First Day Outside & First Parent Encounter

We had our first practice outside this Saturday. The practice started off with me arriving an hour early before practice started to get everything set up and for me to finish my lunch.
Right away we had an incident. An incident in the first fifteen minutes of being outside with the team. All the kids were playing catch and one of the balls sailed away from their partner and hit another player in the head. He obviously went down, holding his head and groaning from pain. Coaches and players gathered around to see the potential damage, but he jumped right back up and kept going. Wiping the tears away from his eyes and cheeks, he continued his game of catch.

Next thing on the agenda was to split up in to a fielding and hitting group. Since I was an infielder growing up, I teach infield to the boys. So I took the infielders over to hit first. We had two full outfields to use because the infields were sloshed and full of puddles. I had another "coach" working with me during the hitting and this was were I had my first encounter with the infamous, my kid comes first and what works for my kid will work for everybody else. When I ran over to talk to the other coaches, I came back to him conducting a little team meeting. He was giving hitting "advice" and what was being said was incorrect. I immediately took the boys away and told them to switch fields and begin fielding practice. I went over to the other head coach and told him what had happened and to keep an eye on his outfielders while hitting, to make sure they get proper instruction.

My name is Daniel Hotujac, and welcome to my blog! My blog is about coaching a youth baseball team and building them from the ground up essentially. They are a second place at best team and it's my job to push them to being a threat at first place for every tournament they enter. My blog is best suited for aspiring coaches and baseball players alike. Hope I can please all my readers with the happenings of the Thunderbolts baseball team!