One of the major goals we have as coaches is to get the players out for the following year. Our athlete's often go through this rollercoaster of emotions throughout practice, a game, a weekend, a season, etc. It is our job to create an environment that focuses on the next task. As long as we are prepared, working hard, and having fun, the outcome will take care of itself.

Program Standards: These standards are discussed with the West Fargo legion players. 

1. Barehand the Baseball: You never pick up a baseball, that isn’t moving, with your glove so you should not do this during catch or at any time in practice. We want to make practice similar to a game.

2. Always Touch 1st Base: If you get out in a game always hustle down the line and touch first base. This extra effort is important to how you play the game.

3. Control the Controllable's: There are a lot of variables in this game, especially stats. You cannot control what happens when the ball leaves your bat when your hitting, or the ball leaves your hand when pitching. Control what you can control. Hit the ball hard, execute your pitch, be prepared baserunning and on defense.


Coaches Tips:

1. Build into game speed- Drills building into game like repetitions. You can scaffold the defensive part of practice from fundamentals to game-like speed. Use the stopwatch to your advantage to give player’s a goal for accomplishing a task. This could be catcher pop time or having an infielder field the ball and throw it to first on time.

Help players with their swing and then move into a game-like hitting session. At the varsity age we need a pitching machine to get game-like repetitions. At the youth ages you can simulate any pitcher during BP if you throw from 40 feet away in the cages. 

2. Make it Competitive. This could be with a radar gun, stopwatch, applying a reward or consequence to an individual or team drill. Athletes love it when we make the practice competitive, but it is easier said than done. We have to find ways to be creative.

3. Get the Majority of our Athletes Moving. If we have an on field practice or cage practice, how can we get the majority of our athletes moving? Watching one guy swing and the rest standing around can be difficult for the attention span. Incorporate stations, mental repetitions, etc, to get everyone moving.

 Before throwing you should do a warm-up. Here is a great arm circle exercise to get started. If you have J-Bands (Resistance Bands) you can also go through an arm care routine. Please check out this video for an arm care routine. Throwing and long toss is extremely important for arm care and arm strength. Please watch this four-minute video for long toss to be explained. The video discusses the out phase and pull-down phase. Please note that the distances for long toss vary by age and athlete. 

Important aspects of throwing to remember:
1. Listen to you arm. If it does not feel the best make less throws. If it feels great make more. How our arm feels is an indicator of how we should train that day.

2. Incorporate different elements of your position into playing catch. (Catch Play) Here is a video on catch play. You can practice quick hands, position specific footwork, different arm slots, pickoff moves, different grips for pitching, etc. Utilize this time of practice, to get better!

3. Remind athletes that catch is the most important part of the day. For pitching this is obvious, but we can field groundballs and we still have to throw it and catch it to get an out. We can catch a pop fly, but we still have to throw it to our cut off guy. So many games are won and loss by the ability to play catch.

4. Throw through the person that you are throwing to not to them.

The Patriots use the two sayings "Catch every thrown ball" and "glove to glove." Using these two statements helps us stay focused. 

Different Throwing and Catching Drills:

1. Four Corners you can modify this drill in many ways. You can add two baseballs. You can also add a stopwatch to make it more competitive as they race against the clock or try to beat the opposing team. 

2. Cut and Relay Drill

Reminder that infield play starts with throwing and catch play. A lot of errors are because of our throwing. For our infielders, make sure they are taking catch play seriously. Also, our infielders throw with different arm slots when they play infield so they can practice that at the end of catch. 

Infield Basics- Where do we want to field it in the glove? 

When building up towards ground balls during our drill set, we should pick drills that work the hands, then feet, then hands and feet.

Below are some different infield drills. You do not need any equipment to perform drills. The athlete can use their barehand and their partner can flip them the ball. The barehand is a great tool to utilize to get better at infield. 

Kai Correa Hands Drills - Make sure your palm is open and fingers are pointed perpendicular to the ground.

Footwork Drills - This is a timing drill for when you get to the baseball. It is the job of our feet to create a long hop or a short hop. We want to avoid in-between hops when fielding ground balls. 

Reminder a ball and a wall is all your athlete needs to get better at infield play. They can put themselves through drills, field ground balls, or get creative with different games they create for themselves and their friends.

Please click here to view a PowerPoint for speed and strength. Included is a sample weight lifting program from NCAA Division 2 school University of Mary.