T-Ball Coaching 101: Lessons from my first team practice

Good morning Steemit!

My 4 year old son, Damian, started T-ball the other night. Anyone that has been around baseball for this age group can understand and visualize what a practice looks like. It's not pretty! These are boys and girls that have no idea what baseball is or how its played. So you can imagine my horror when I received an e-mail asking if I would like to co-coach his team this summer.

I played baseball my whole life and I like to think I was pretty good at it. Throughout high school I was flown from Minnesota to Florida to spend a month teaching middle and other high school kids how to play the game at an elite level at one of the best baseball schools in the country. Helping kids improve that already understand the game is one thing, but kids that would rather kick sand and draw pictures with sticks is whole other ball game. Add to that they have the attention span of a fly and you begin to really understand what this looks like :)

I was fortunate enough to be paired with another coach, coach Eric, who had coached his older son in T-ball before. I also reached out to my Facebook friends for advice. They were able to provide a ton of great tips while others were smart asses and made funny comments.

I spent most of the practice following Eric's lead. He did a great job getting the kids excited about being there and we kept them moving along to the next drill. The key to this age group is short practices and make things fun. When running make it a race and ask trivia questions like "what base are you on? What base are you going to next and what do you get when you touch home?". For catching and fielding ground balls the kids like to pretend that they are alligators chomping the ball (ball into the glove and hand "chomps" covers it). Trust me, as silly as this sounds, it teaches fundamentals and the kids like doing it. Hitting is a little difficult to get the kids to understand how to stand, where to put there hands and how to swing correctly. We only got through one time each and there are no Mike Trouts on our team, at least not yet.

I would say my first coaching day was a success. The goal of this age group, #1, is to have fun! By the end of the year if the kids can catch, throw and hit the ball off the tee it would be a HUGE success!

I hope you enjoyed this post!

Do you have any advice for a new T-Ball coach?

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