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Recreational Coaches Pep Rally - Part I
by Dave
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
 Sorry, girls. This one is for parents, specifically the parents who are volunteering to coach recreational softball teams in town leagues around the country. For you parents who dare to sail into turbulent waters (in other words coach), this is my pep rally to get you ready for the coming season. I recently sat through tryouts and a draft meeting for 8 and 9 year old girls, about half of whom have never before played the sport of softball. We judged the relative abilities of something less than 100 girls. The tryouts were a success mostly because they resulted in only two or three minor injuries! Then the team managers met for an hour or so and conducted a draft. This went pretty smoothly although I did hear one ridiculous and unsuccessful request for a trade. I say ridiculous because I cannot imagine even one possible valid motivation for the request. The event caused me to reflect upon what coaching rec ball is really all about.
Vince Lombardi is the man given credit for the phrase, "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing." I think he was absolutely correct and I think the phrase aptly states what all softball coaches should keep in mind as they prepare for the coming season. We are coaching girls softball to win. We must win or our season will be a failure. We must win or we, as coaches, are failures. Those are some pretty strong terms, aren't they? But let me explain what I mean by "winning." "Winning" is not measured by any number shown on a scoreboard or scorebook, nor is it reflected by any known statistic commonly used in softball. To judge "winning," we must perform a far more difficult calculation than mere batting average or winning percentage. In order to win as a rec ball coach, you must calculate the likelihood that your girls made real progress, sufficient to make them willing and able to continue playing softball and perhaps even play it at a higher level.
To begin, the first thing you must teach all your girls is how to throw. You must teach them to throw well enough to reach the next girl (be she at first base or a cutoff person) and you must teach them how to do this in a fashion which will not lead to future injuries. If you don't teach all your kids to throw, your season is a failure. They can hit like ARod or Samantha Findlay or make great plays in the field but if they cannot throw, they will not be able to play at the next level whether the next level is 10 and under rec, travel ball, or the junior high school team. It is not enough for them to reach the next player. They must learn to do this with proper throwing technique.
Proper throwing technique means the least amount of stress on the shoulder and elbow joints. To demonstrate, get a ball. The grip should be across the seams like a four-seam fastball. Place the ball on the table in front of you. Now turn it so you see the "big C." The "certified-ASA" or other logo should be in front of you and turned to the side, one quarter counter clockwise. Now, pick it up with four fingers on the lace at the top of the "C." Your thumb should be on the lace which is just out of sight under the ball. The number of actual fingers (aside from the thumb) which remain on the laces depends on a girl's hand size. Four is OK for small girls, three is better and two is best but almost impossible for most girls. If you are holding it using three fingers, the pinky is folded under the ball and when you turn your hand sideways, you should see a gap between the ball and your palm. The correct pressure of the fingers on the ball is very little - you should be able to easily pull the ball out of your throwing hand with your free hand. if you've never tried this, go ahead. You should be surprised how easily the ball comes out from your throwing hand. There should be almost no resistance.
Drill Suggestion:
Before you even begin doing a full throw, have the girls kneel down on both knees, place the elbow directly in front of the shoulder, hold onto the throwing elbow with the glove side hand and throw by only wristing it. the hand is cocked back with the ball in front of the face. The hand simply snaps forward, throwing the ball straight ahead.
Now you are ready to assume throwing position. Raise both arms into a "scarecrow" position where your elbows are at the height of your shoulders, your hands are in the air, there is a ninety degree angle at your elbows, you look like you're making a weak "goalpost" position with your arms. If you look from side to side at your hands, you want to see the knuckles on both. The ball is pointing away from your head. Now cock the ball hand so the ball is open to the sky - you are looking at your finger tips rather than your knuckles.
Now begin the throw by rotating your hips and shoulders in the throwing direction (toward your non-throwing hand). No stress is placed on the shoulder or arm but the throwing motion has begun. As your shoulders become square to the throwing direction, the wrist snaps forward and the ball is released. This causes the forearm and elbow to come forward of the shoulder and body. From there, the arm motion concludes with a pull down toward the non-throwing side thigh.
This is the most powerful throwing motion (excluding any talk about the legs) and puts the least amount of stress on the joints. But a couple rep.s is just not going to get the job done. You need to spend a good portion of your first practice teaching and repeating good form throwing. Then you need to engage in accentuated form throwing at the beginning of every practice. Muscle memory is a tricky thing. A human must repeat a physical act a huge number of repetitions before a muscle has memorized the proper mechanics. Do not allow your girls to relapse into bad throwing habits. Make every throw counts.
Once you have worked the basic mechanics a lot, you can add a step. I'm not sure that I need to say much about this but a thrower stands sideways with her non-throwing side facing the throwing direction. She assumes the scarecrow position while looking down her shoulder at the intended target. Feet are shoulder width apart, and perpendicular to the throwing direction. The non-throwing side foot turns towards the target as it is picked up and steps in this direction. The back foot remains perpendicular and in the middle of the step, the hips and shoulders begin to rotate and the arm begins the throwing motion as above. The actual release of the ball occurs just as the stepping foot is landing.
So now you've taught your girls to throw fairly well and are planning on reinforcing this skill at every practice - right after warm up and stretching and before anything else. The next skill you want to teach is catching. You might wonder how you can possibly teach throwing skills without the girls knowing how to catch. That's a reasonable question but the answer is you don't have the girls catch thrown balls at the first practice. Coaches and any available parents do that - at least for the time being until you know the girls can catch. this permits coaches to instruct each girl on proper throwing techniques and prevent wrong throwing mechanics which happen when you've got five sets of girls throwing back and forth with no supervision.
Catching is really simple to put into words and twice as hard as anything else! You teach catching without the use of a glove. Catching is always two hands. For whatever reason, teaching catching with gloves encourages catching with one hand. You want the girls to catch with two hands and then cradle the ball like they are catching an egg. Immediately after catching the ball, the hands drop bringing the ball to the waist - like you are trying to prevent the egg from cracking. There isn't much I can tell you about the "mechanics" of catching beyond this. A few minutes of bare handed "egg-toss" at each practice is enough to reinforce the skill as this is not really a muscle memory exercise.
Another important catching skill is the recognition that the fingers point up for throws above the waist and down only for throws below it. Throw a few tosses to your girls' chests and a few to below the waist. Make sure they are pointing their fingers in the right direction. After perhaps a practice or two, you can have the girls put on their mitts right after say 5 "egg-tosses" and then begin your throwing drills with the girls rather than the coaches catching the lightly tossed throws.
Your next skill is retrieval of a ground ball. This, like throwing, must be reinforced via many repetitions. First the proper body position. Feet are shoulder width apart and pointing in the direction from which the ball is coming. Do not allow girls to open their feet - point toes outwards from their body as this promotes an unbalanced state. Just like throwing or hitting, the toes point right at you. The knees bend slightly and the upper torso bends forward. the butt must not drop below the knees. hands are together directly in front and just below the face. This is ready position for beginners. ready position is NOT hands on knees.
From this "ready position" the mitt hands drops to just above the dirt and the pocket is held open to the direction from which the ball will be rolled. The upper, throwing hand remains out in front of the face but not obscuring vision of the ball. This is "alligator" with an open mouth position. Now a ball is rolled slowly towards the fielder and she is encouraged to wait for the ball to roll into her mitt. Then the alligator closes its mouth - the throwing hand closes in behind the ball. Then the hands lift up, cradling the ball, to the waist. Note that the fielder must "look the ball into her glove." This should be an accentuated "bowing of the head." As the person rolling the ball to the fielder, you want to see the top of her head, even the back.
Whether a girl is catching a thrown ball or retrieving a ground ball, after she pulls the ball to her waist, she can assume scarecrow position, take a step and make a throw but introduce this step separate and apart from basic catching and groundball retrieval. After a couple of practices, you will integrate the steps.
If you get no further than this but you teach these skills effectively and your girls develop good mechanics, you may consider your job of being a coach to have been a success. I mean this. So many girls never learn to throw, catch and field and without these skills, they will eventually tire of the sport and do something else. I'm going to stop here and pickup with offensive skills in part II of my annual pep rally for rec coaches.
 
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