Brain Child

So we've been struggling with the girls in softball. They are so near perfect one day and then play like t-ball girls the next. We are trying to get them to understand what it's like on our side. Insert my Brain Child. I came up with the idea of them running a practice. Not their own but planning and executing a practice for Frosh/Soph. So Friday they had 40 minutes to plan a practice. Erin and I spend about 15-20 so we figured double as their first shot out. They had to write it out and follow it. Today that was executed.

I was particularly looking forward to a couple of parts, the stuff with my pitchers and catchers, a drill called 5 in a row and then seeing how they work together as coaches. Watching the pitchers work with other pitchers was nice. It showed me they do pay attention once in awhile :) 5 in a row which they turned into 3 in a row is a drill that is based purely on getting your own job done. Simple enough. You must cleanly field and throw the ball to 1st base as an infielder. As an outfielder you must cleanly field and hit your cutoff depending on what side of the field your on. Pressure, you have it in a game and you have to find creative ways to create it in practice. As is our other drill, 21 outs. They have to get 21 outs in a row, no errors. Why 21 outs? Because we have 7 innings with 3 outs, do the math. The simple fact of it is, they each would only have to get 1-2 outs each, not near as easy as it sounds.

We heard some great comments: "I think I have a grey hair growing; I want to throw the bat; I don't know how you do this everyday; I want to choke **** (other coach). It was nice to sit in the stands and drink water. We had to make a few comments for form that they didn't see but other than that we were out of it.

They got out of it exactly what I was hoping. Every comment they made was exactly what we wanted to hear. They were ready to get back to practice and are really looking forward to tomorrow and what we do for them. YAY! :D