A good plan will have the following key sections:
a. Gathering drill — I put in 10-15 minutes that I start 10 minutes before practice is officially scheduled to start in case some kids come early. I run it for 5 minutes into practice. I come up with something that will be structured so I don’t have random kids doing random things waiting for practice to start.
Minutes 5-20 — warmups — strength and conditioning — relay races — running — you need to build up strength and kids need a break from being in school all day and they love running so have them run. Stretch, count as a team — build up the team here.
Minutes 20-35 Defensive skill
Focus on catching a ball, focus on how to throw, focus on how to field a ground ball. Pick drills but this should include all members and generate a lot of reps. I always do defense first as it can be more boring so do it at the start when kids have more energy.
Minutes 35-40 water break
Minutes 40-100 Offense — work on hitting, set up a ton of hitting stations if you have 12 kids it’s not one pitcher throws to hitter and everyone stands around. I like to do coach pitch on the infield too with a 2b and ss as fielders and parents in the outfield. I give them 10-15 swings and then say rotate. At the same time I set up hitting stations along the right field foul line — deep enough so they aren’t hit by a ball. If we have 12 kids I have just occupied 3 of them. So I have 9 to go. So I can have a T station with two fielders. That’s 3. I can have a 2T station where they hit off 2T’s (see hitting drills) for a hitter and two fielders so that’s 3 more and I can have a live pitch station with a kid pitcher and a tennis ball and the batter using a swift stick. After I throw my 10-15 pitches I say switch and there is a very prescribed rotation which I call out as I assign the stations but basically kids rotate down one notch (think as if they are all in a line) and move from station to station and the batter from my station goes to the furthest most point in the right field. Adjust number of stations based on kids and have an assistant coach or parent run each T station. Space them out so no one gets hit by random balls. So if we have 12 kids and it’s 3-4 minutes of hitting per kid, we can do this in an hour. They get a LOT of swings this way.
Minute 100-120 (if you have two hours) now you can play a game that works team defense, you can do baserunning drills, lots of options as you are sort of wrapping up.
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