I have been thinking more and more about what to do as a coach as I keep walking my dog by the field and see the young players.
The more I walk by the field near our house the more I think of all the work I did coaching and I really wonder if I made sure and had enough fun. I wanted players to learn and to compete and to work together as a team and I was afraid that if I focused just on fun it would be chaos.
But goodness I saw a pre-Tball team last week — we call it BlastBall and they were four.
They were so little and so young.
I think making sure they had as much fun as possible has to be the goal. That league has a base that beeps and makes a noise when you run to it. I remember our youngest son playing and how much he smiled when he jumped on that base and made it beep.
I really think my t-ball teams got started well as I saw a deal on 13oz bats and bought 8 of them and I think it made it so they didn’t start with a bat that was too heavy for them. So many terrible habits occur when the game is just too hard for a very small person. A 25oz bat is just too much for a player to hold when they are that young so they start compensating and doing crazy things that then build up muscle memory and it’s hard to fix. So I did the bats right. Not sure I had enough fun. I know we tried to include fun but I think if I did it again I’d get a bunch of bases that made a noise and make sure they jumped on them a LOT so we could associate a base with FUN.
Then I think you gotta work on fear of the ball. I worked it a lot and that’s one thing I did well. We started close up and worked our way further back and all of my players got confidence with catching a ball at a young age. I didn’t fire it at their heads just nice gentle tosses starting with a tennis ball.
I worked on mechanics a little too much. I wanted them to have good throwing and hitting mechanics and I think those can be tweaked over time and it’s not too big a deal if they are odd when they are very young. They grow and the mechanics change. I think instead of doing step by step throwing I’d do more of throwing at a target and see if they self-correct, like give them 10 balls and say keep doing it until you hit the target.
I didn’t do the towel drill in t-ball and I should have. It keeps you from pushing the ball and I think the kids would have loved it. I did it with some 8, 9 year olds this week and they loved it and it fixed some things. I just added it to the pitching drill section.
Well if you are reading this you are thinking about T-ball maybe next spring and I say start now. Even when it’s cold you can toss a tennis ball to a young player and see if they catch it. Hitting off a T is fun too and again start with a light bat and a tennis ball and just have fun with it.
If any of this sounds like your kid’s backyard next weekend, come join the newsletter — I’ll send you drills, bat tips, and everything else I wish I’d done earlier, including the Quick Start Guide to get your little one off on the right foot.
