coaching advice

[Three A's baseball]

i sometimes see some of the club teams coaches yelling out to their team in the field that solicits a reponse to get them set ready aware, etc...

any help here. does anyone do this?

[callyjr]

I have 7,8,9, and 10's on my team. I do it just about every batter.

[CoachHenry]

Depends on the age, league, etc. For my daughter's team I'll yell out here and there if there has been a lull in the action. For the 8 yr olds about half don't really need that but some are distracting themselves. A quick "Who want's this ball?" or something brings them back to focus. When my son was young the same thing applied. As he and his teams got older that wasn't needed except occasionally.

[jacksimpk]

I coach a 6-8 "minor B" little league team and a 9-11 "minor A" little league team. With my younger kids its constant. The worst is when they are building sand castles in the dirt! We have 2 coaches actually in the field and its difficult to keep them on task. (I should say 6 of my 11 players are 6 years old) You can see the difference in the older kids.

With my minor A team I insist on a "pre-pitch" (that is taking 2 steps into ready position) during the pitcher's wind up. I make them run laps or do push ups if I don't see a pre-pitch in practice.

Bottom line - there is a huge difference in maturity and you can demand more from older more experience players. Actually I should say expect more. Clearly lay down your expectations make sure they meet them in practice and bench them in the game if they can't handle it. If your best player is looking at their shoes while a grounder goes past ..... you might as well have your worse player there who is paying attention and trying to make the play.

[jbolt_2000]

Depends on the age, league, etc. For my daughter's team I'll yell out here and there if there has been a lull in the action. For the 8 yr olds about half don't really need that but some are distracting themselves. A quick "Who want's this ball?" or something brings them back to focus. When my son was young the same thing applied. As he and his teams got older that wasn't needed except occasionally.

I agree with this. I coach a 9-10y/o team and in the beginning it was constant, but once they make it a habit the less I said anything. I think they realized that they were much better on defense when they were in a well balanced ready position, then they were when just standing straight up looking at the batter.

I'll do it at any level I coach until it is automatic for the kids. Of course, I suppose at the older levels they should be doing this anyways and if they aren't then there might be a problem.

[korp]

I have seen alot of coaches at different levels do this but you just have to see if it motivates the team or not because no reason to do it if it doesn't.