Well with the fall just around the corner, I can imagine a mom or dad of a 5 or 6 year old googling “T-ball — getting started” or something like that.
You’ll find a trillion videos and long commentaries and web sites full of ads that make you watch ads and more ads and then finally give you some nuggets of information.
This site has no ads. I have your back.
Why, why why — why do this for no money. No ads. No nothing.
Because I love coaching baseball and I had to go through a learning curve when I started even though I knew a LOT about baseball. Knowing baseball and playing whiffle ball with your friends every minute of your childhood does not necessarily translate into being able to teach T-ball.
Number one thing to do is to get you to recognize that you need to be IN CHARGE. Practice does not need to be chaos but it needs to have focus. 5-6 year olds can do a LOT MORE THAN YOU THINK. I had a T-ball team, we started with wide receiver every practice (see drills part of web site) and videos part of web site. But just start a player on a base and say GO and have them run and then throw them a tennis ball like they are a wide receiver. Make the throw short and easy to catch and the players have so much fun. They won’t catch the first million but make it fun and then when they catch it it’s like they won the world series. So do that every practice to start the practice as you can do that with 5 kids as well as with 10.
Then do a team warmup — line them up and do jumping jacks and a few other stretches — see web site on stretches I recommend.
So now you are 20 minutes in and 40 to go. Almost there.
Now you want to break into stations. Have a GB to pitcher throw to first station. Put 3 kids there and one coach who rolls a GB to the pitcher who sets feet and throws to first. Tell the coach to rotate the players quickly. Break into a fly ball station again 3 kids one coach who tosses fly balls. Then a hitting station where you have 3 tees and 3 coaches and 3 kids where each one hits off a T. So that’s 9 kids occupied so that’s great and everyone is hitting and catching and fielding ground balls. What more can you want. Now you have 10 minutes a station so you have 30 minutes for that so you now have only 10 minutes to go. The last 10 minutes play pickle with them. Put kids on the bases and a coach at first and a coach at 2nd and have them throw a tennis ball back and forth and have everyone run back and forth. If they are tagged out they have to go to a coach and catch one toss of a tennis ball and then rejoin. Use T-balls for the GB drills and for batting — for fly balls stick with tennis balls and for pickle use tennis balls. Bang an hour has gone by and everyone has gotten a ton of reps.
Do not ask other parents to help — insist upon it. Notice this plan has 5-6 assistants — go for more. Do not play into this craziness that you must have glorious super trained assistants, you don’t. You just need people who can run a quick drill, be in command and make stuff happen. Ideally you circulate while drills are running and make sure the pace is good. No one should have one second to go sit around. This is what makes baseball fun — if you have T-ballers sitting around they will soon decide it’s stupid and run off to play soccer — make it fast paced and fun.
Send questions if you are a new T-ball coach and I’ll add more stuff as the season approaches.
If this practice plan got you fired up to get out there with your team, sign up for the newsletter or grab the free Quick Start Guide — it’s all the good stuff in one place.
