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Rec Softball Skill Progression
by Dave
Friday, October 26, 2007
Robert writes in to ask:"As a ... spectator when my two older girls play on our all-star team, I grew increasingly frustrated watching the team's players use bad fundamentals (i.e. outfielders using one-handed catches to miss fly balls rather than square up under the ball) to lose games. During the all star tournaments, I began conversations with coaches and parents regarding lists of skills and game knowledge appropriate to each age group. With such a list, current coaches would know to teach the basics then focus on other strategy/skills. When the player moves up to the next age group, the new coaches would be (somewhat) confident that they could use terminology and strategy without questions from experienced players. Do you know of any resource(s) that would help me and our local league develop this fundamentals list?"
I am not aware of any particular resource which lists a skill progression by age that would provide a checklist you could hand to league coaches and parents to make sure everyone is on the same page. There are a number of problems with creating such a list, not the least of which is everyone involved in rec softball seems to have a different opinion. That is largely due to the fact that everyone seems to approach rec ball with a different agenda. Also, the skill set of girls at a particular age in rec ball is so broad and varied, one list never seems to fit all. Nevertheless, I shall try to outline what I believe is a proper skill progression for rec girls in order to enhance their enjoyment of the game and advance their playing abilities. As I set out on this venture, I am reminded that this can only represent my opinion and it sets me up for a large portion of criticism from those whose opinions vary from mine.
General OverviewBefore I begin a skill progression, let me describe the quandry in which one finds oneself as one enters the rec world. First of all, I think sometimes the names we use (recreational and travel, for example) don't do justice to the way folks approach the game. "Travel" does not always involve a lot of travel. "Recreational" softball most often is not undertaken with the purpose of getting girls out in the open air for exercise and recreation.
Recreational softball and baseball contain far too many instances of parents living vicariously through their children. My personal experience with rec was not a positive one. I have found coaches and parents involved with the sport in its "recreational" version to use it as a proxy for other competitive outlets.
Our town recreational league is highly competitive. That doesn't mean the kids or teams are any good - they aren't. But the coaches and parents seem to all be involved for a single purpose, to win games. This manifests itself in many negative ways including teaching the girls what they need to win at a given level rather than teaching them the skills which will make them better players in the long-run and thereby enhance their enjoyment of the sport.
In the early years, many teams take their best player and stick her at first. This is done so they can get the outs more often than not on grounders to the infield. Games are often won by the team which can get a few outs. It doesn't matter that the girl stuck on first might be the best shortstop or want to play some other position. If you don't have a girl at first who can make a lot of the difficult plays, you lose.
Another common problem is the girl who can "just get it over" is made into the pitcher. Her mechanics might be awful but she can throw strikes. The girl who is in lessons and has pretty good mechanics will end up playing someplace else because she hasn't found the strike zone just yet. Never mind the fact that if she pitches in games, she'll progress faster. We haven't got time for that. We need to win right now and if she walks too many batters, we can't. Put somebody out there who can throw strikes for goodness sake.
Another phenomenon which happens in rec ball is kids who really cannot hit are encouraged to stick their bats out and just tap the ball. Coaches realize that if their weakest hitters put the ball in play, there is a good chance errors will occur and they'll score a lot of runs. Never mind that the kid will never learn to hit. The point is to win games, isn't it?
Most often in rec ball there is a lot of lip service paid to giving girls experience in the field. Players are apparently moved around from position to position from inning to inning in order to give them that experience. Yet the same kids end up playing key positions and the girls who are not quite as skilled are moved between the lesser important ones. I never put a kid who absolutely could not catch a thrown ball on first or a girl who could not field a simple grounder at third, but I taught those kids how to do those skills and tried to get them ready to play at those positions. Most of the time I succeeded in getting the weaker players ready to do more than stand in the outfield.
Finally, in rec, many girls of lesser abilities are encouraged to just get the ball back to the pitcher rather than making a play which could possibly result in an error. They are not taught to make ordinary plays which will be required at the next level. They are taught to perform damage control actions which have the least possibility of "hurting the team." If, for example, baserunners are permitted to advance after an overthrow by the catcher, coaches often do not encourage their inexperienced catchers to make throws on stealing runners. They don't mind the steal that much, but can't live with the overthrow. That hurts the girls but it does avoid losing games because of errors.
The most egregious example I have ever observed of a poor approach in rec ball occurred one season in a tight game. The teams were separated by one run. The team in the lead was in the field during the final inning. The trailing team had its three best hitters due up. The leading team's coach told the pitcher to walk these first three batters because the kids who followed them could not hit. The pitcher threw wild balls to these first three batters, walking them to load the bases. The next three batters were pretty much hopeless. The first one took three strikes down the middle, never even attempting to swing the bat, ostensibly because her coach had told her to do that so his team could win! The next girl was extremely nervous and swung at everything, striking out on three pitches. The next batter was the worst of the bunch and flailed hopelessly, ending the game. The winning team's parents screamed in joy as the poor girl swung wildly at the final pitch. They had won, they had won ... a crappy rec game. Big Deal!
My kids weren't involved in that game but it was very disappointing to me. That was 12U ball and none of those girls learned a darn thing from the experience except that winning was very important to their parents.
In a season between even younger girls I had a similarly bad experience. My daughter was 9 and had been trained to pitch for a couple years. She was a hard thrower with pinpoint accuracy. I recognized that her abilities were not appropriate for rec softball at her age and petitioned the league to allow her to play up. They refused because, as they told me, my kid's skill could help the other girls learn to play better.
My daughter pitched several games. The league had an inning limit which was instituted not so much to protect kids' arms but rather because a long time ago there had been another kid who could really pitch in the league. Her father was mine's pitching coach. She was lights out so the league created a rule limiting pitchers to 3 innings per game. That way they could make pretty sure that one pitcher would not have quite so much impact on the outcome of games.
We were resigned to the fact that my daughter would never learn to pitch a whole game and that our team wasn't permitted to draft any players until all the more skilled and older girls were gone. The result was we didn't have a viable option for pitcher number 2. During one game, after the first 9 pitch inning my daughter threw, the opposing coach came over to me and let me know that "we only let our girls pitch one inning" just in case I was thinking of throwing my daughter for a second one. He did this because he wanted his team to have a good chance of winning the game. How ridiculous is that? Well it isn't nearly as ridiculous as the mid-season petition started by other coaches to prevent my daughter from pitching in games because of a made-up fear that she might injure a girl if she hits one. When that started, she had only thrown about ten balls the entire season - she had outstanding control. Still, several coaches got together and tried to rally support for preventing my kid from pitching!
During another season, I uncovered just how deeply this overly-competitive rec problem runs. The league President had a daughter playing in 10U. He had decreed that girls were not permitted to windmill pitch. At some point in the early spring, he discovered a private coach for his kid and that coach began to teach her to windmill. She wasn't any good but at this level, it really didn't matter. She could get it over and that was enough. In mid-season, the President announced that from this point forward, windmilling would be permitted. His kid was the only girl who could perform the motion and the batters she faced were overwhelmed by this new style. Do I need to go on with this discussion? I don't think so.
In rec, there is a mistaken belief that the "real athletes" will simply manifest themselves over time. They'll be the ones chosen for all-stars, eventually become good ballplayers, and then progress into high school ball when they get older. There is little done to actually coach these kids. Rather they are left to their own devices since they are "real athletes" and much of the limited practice time is spent preparing girls for what they will do in games - get the ball back to the pitcher, not make difficult throws, etc. Skills are just not taught.
I have seen as many of these "real athletes" fall by the wayside as I have seen lesser girls who never learned a thing from their coaches leave the sport because "it's stupid." The "real athletes" begin to falter as soon as girls with more sophisticated parents begin dragging their kids out of the rec league and into travel programs where often skills are taught because they have to be. The "real athletes" often develop mechanical throwing flaws which set in for years and then are unable to be corrected. They become those awfulk side-arm throwers. They develop strange hitched swings reminiscent of adult beer league swings meant to hit the ball over the fence. They never adjust to the challenge of facing fast pitching because there isn't any in the rec league. The girls who can actually pitch leave rec earlier than others just to get the opportunity to pitch in games. Worst of all, the "real athletes" are never coached so they become uncoachable. You can't all of a sudden be accepting of constructive criticism at the age of 14 when nobody has corrected you for the past 6 or 8 years.
Be that as it may, let's move on to skill progression.
Age GroupsI'm going to break this down into age groups with an understanding that not all girls at a given age need the same skills taught to them. I'll skip right past anyone younger than 8 because the largest span of skills is evident in girls this young and because real play does not begin until coaches stop pitching and standing in the field to direct the girls. I'm going to break skill progression into the following age categories: 8-10, 12U, and 14U. At late 14 and up, many girls are playing high school varsity ball which means they are really playing 18U. Also, by that age, it is too late to discuss skills progression.
Girls at 8 are often getting their first or second year of softball, the first being some sort of teeball. A few can throw the ball further than 30 feet but most cannot. Very few girls can catch a ball thrown by another girl. They can hit the ball sometimes. They can field a slowly rolled grounder. Pop-ups are out of the question.
By 9 or 10, most rec girls can throw 40 - 60 feet though not very accurately. They can catch balls thrown by others though not every time. Most can run bases fairly well. They hit pretty well especially with slow pitching that is around the plate. They can field many hit grounders and a few pop-ups are catchable.
Still I lump 8-10 together because many 8s are as good as decent 10s and many 10s need as much attention as beginner 8s. Within this span, there is a broad diversity of capabilities and it is often better to describe skill progression in two parts, that for more competitive and that for lesser.
By 11 or 12, almost all girls can throw reasonably well, some far better than others, and it is now possible for the entire team to warm up by throwing to each other since most girls can catch somewhat well. Hitting is better than it was at 10 though some still struggle to just make contact and pitching is improving a bit though it is nothing like its travel counterpart. Girls remaining in rec 12U are still very interested in the game and while there is a decided skill divide, most of the kids who have real skills have left for travel so the difference between kids is not quite so readily apparent.
By 13 and 14, most of the girls who can actually play the game have left rec ball but a few whose parents have made them stay are still there. They don't take it very seriously unless and until the Little League's Senior tournament rolls around. They view practice and games as social events. The skill divide widens at this point as girls who seemed promising last year in 12U begin to lose interest rapidly.
So, the question remains how and what should you teach these girls to play?
Rational ApproachThe most rational approach I have ever seen taken in rec ball begins with a separation of skills. The first identifiable skill is pitching. The best rec leagues identify the girls who want to pitch and then teach them to windmill properly, at least in the basic sense. The league conducts clinics every weekend for as long as two months before the season begins and often well into competitive play. Girls who want to pitch must attend a specified percentage of these clinics. Can't make it to the clinics, that's OK, you won't be pitching.
The identified and trained pitchers begin play in a league for 8 and 9 year olds. Player drafts begin with each 9U team being alloted the same number of pitchers. Again, only these girls can pitch in games. The better 8s and 9s are moved into the 10U league. The 10U league is broken into more competitive and lesser competitive divisions. Good 8s and 9s first pitch in the lesser competitive 10U division. Then, if they progress, they move into the more competitive division.
The very best leagues I have observed do not permit walking at the entry kid-pitched level. They have girls pitch until 4 or 6 balls are thrown after which the coach pitches until the batter hits the ball into play, strikes out swinging, or watches a set number of coach pitches go by. Girls who are moved into more competitive divisions are those who can hit live pitching. Batters are thus encouraged to not just wait for the coach to pitch.
Emphasis in the pitching clinics should be placed on mechanical issues. Girls should not be encouraged to, for example, throw with bent arms in order to get it over. Coaches qualified to teach basic mechanics, often outsiders, run these clinics and girls are encouraged to practice on their own.
Catchers should also be identified and taught. They should accompany pitchers to the pitching clinics and learn through experience and teaching how to catch pitched balls. After the pitching clinic is concluded (usually these are one hour long sessions), it is time for the catchers to be taught throwing mechanics for another hour. In later years, blocking and other skills can also be taught but at the earliest, most fundamental levels, they aren't resady for that yet.
Fielding/Throwing 101For everyone else, at the beginner level, leagues should provide a different set of clinics, one for fielding and throwing, and another for hitting fundamentals. The single most important skill which should be taught to girls in the beginner 8 and 9 year old range is throwing. Many bad habits can start at this age and arm injuries are also an important issue. If I had to identify one skill which 8s and 9s must focus on, that would be throwing.
The sister skill to throwing is, obviously, catching. This is probably a more difficult one to teach but there are approaches to teaching it which work. Clinics at which these skills are taught should be conducted by the league - don't leave it up to coaches who sprint to practice after long commutes, after longer work days. The 8 and 9 year old learning of throwing and catching skills should be taught in as structured an evironment as possible. Again, self-practice should be emphasized. Parents of these kids should be asked to commit to playing catch for 15 minutes at least twice a week.
In addition to learning to throw and catch mechanically correct, girls should be taught how to field a standard ground ball properly. This entails a lot of repetition and constant supervision with appropriate correction. Once these skills are taught in clinic, there may be time to work on mechanics of fly ball fielding but I believe that is best taught to more advanced players.
The more advanced but younger kids also need to be taught basic skills such as throwing and catching. But in more advanced kids, there should be more emphasis placed on footwork and more advanced skills. Don't skip throwing skills because the name of the clinic is "advanced 10U" but teach the fundamentals while also teaching crow hopping for longer throws and skipping or popping into position on infield grounders. More advanced 10U kids should be taught fundamentals of flyball and pop-up fielding in addition to grounders.
In both the beginner and advanced 8-10 category, baserunning skills should be taught in at least a cursory manner. Proper positioning at the base is the first, most important, skill followed by getting off the base properly and at the right moment - usually after the pitch reaches the plate. Running hard to and through first base should also be covered. More advanced kids should be taught to "break down the run" after reaching first with an eye towards being aware when overthrows occur. Beginners and their more advanced contemporaries should also be introduced to rounding a bag on outfield hits as well. And moving from first to third could be introduced too.
I do not believe a lot of situational awareness should be taught at this age. Some of that will happen naturally in team practices and games. And a lot of that is best taught in a game setting rather than practices or clinics.
In terms of hitting, for some reason rec leagues usually have a teeball league which feeds into the pitched leagues and as soon as teeball is over, we throw away the batting tees! My personal preference is for all kids 10 and under to continue taking hacks at the tee. Clinics for hitting skills could be set up on alternate weekends with those set up for fielding and throwing skills. Emphasis must be on swing mechanics including proper stance, taking a short path to the point of contact, and making contact with a fluid follow-through. This is best taught at the tee and with soft toss.
As I said, typically in rec league, batting practice is live pitching, usually a coach doing the pitching so strikes are thrown, and there is no emphasis on a good hitting mechanic. Kids never learn to pick up the ball off a windmill pitcher and their swings are horrible.
By contrast, in most travel organizations, kids take a ton of tee, soft-tossed and live-kid-pitched batting practice. They have to develop good swings in order to deal with the relatively high quality of pitching they will face. In rec league, the emphasis is on hitting the coach-slow-pitched ball as hard as possible. For this reason, coaches usually teach kids to pull the bat way back, take a huge stride and swing as hard as possible.
Skills at 12UIt is important to note that you just cannot gloss over the fundamentals taught at 8, 9, and 10 once girls get to the ripe old age of 11. Rather, the very same skills must be taught in clinic. But at this age, you want to work in fundamental plays and a more developed situational awareness. Girls should be taught to get the lead runner by throwing to second base on grounders up the middle. Outfielders should be taught to throw to the lead base and to cutoffs, and in all cases, not to simply throw the ball to the pitcher after every retrieval.
Bunt defense must be taught at this age even for rec players who do not see as much bunting as their travel counterparts. Bunting is more the reality in fastpitch softball than it is in baseball. The skill of barehanding slow or stopped balls, which is least worked on in rec settings, must be taught at this age. Drills can be worked into fielding clinics to cover this as they don't take very much time. Every kid playing rec ball should, by the age of 12, know how to barehand a ball while moving her feet into position to make a throw.
Girls should also understand the fundamentals of tagging up both from an offensive and defensive point of view. While working baserunning drills, some sort of tagging up drill should be worked into the mix. A full blown discussion of situational base running should be included wherein the rules regarding tagging up should be discussed from both the offensive and defensive point of view. If clinics are held outdoors, or at the very least during outdoor practices, both offensive and defensive sides of the tag up can be worked simultaneously.
Additionally, some other more advanced concepts should be worked into the 12U discussion, clinics, and practices. For example, holding at second, when not forced, on grounders hit in front of the runner and rounding third on outfield hits should be covered. Also, moving to an uncovered base can be discussed though many will never attempt it. Other offensive strategies can begin to be introduced at 12U.
Hitting mechanics must still be taught but bunting must be worked in at this age. The fundamental sacrifice should be something every rec girl is at least familiar with, if not something she can execute. Similarly, anyone playing third or first base should know how to field a bunt and get the out at first. Second baseman should understand the need to cover first. Shortstops should similarly understand base coverage fundamentals including steal coverages.
Skills at 14UAt 14U, I still do not want to skip the throwing, fielding and hitting mechanical issues. But at this point, girls get really bored, very easily, when such topics are gone over in detail. To advance these girls skills while also keeping them interested, I suggest that more complicated skills be taught during the fundamentals. Some of these are run-downs, safety squeezes, slapping, double plays, advanced baserunning, and perhaps some advanced set plays on defense such as those dealing with first and third situations. If all the available talent has left rec for other pursuits, you may not get far along with these skills but you should at least educate the girls in order to enhance their enjoyment of the game.
CarryoverIn the original question, Robert said he wanted to develop a common set of skill progressions so "when the player moves up to the next age group, the new coaches would be (somewhat) confident that they could use terminology and strategy without questions from experienced players." I understand the objective but there is one problem with this approach. Rec softball usually spans the end of March through the beginning of June. That's at most two and a half to three months. I believe the notion that a person can do anything for that period and then retain a significant portion of it into the following year is flawed.
We put our kids in school for about 9 months of the year. They get something like 2 to 3 months off for the summer. The next fall, when they return, teachers spend about the first half of the year going over what was learned the prior year before moving on to more advanced topics. Yet, in a softball discussion, we assume girls are going to retain skills and knowledge after a nine to nine and a half month layoff from the sport. I believe that is overly optimistic.
By contrast, travel players usually tryout in fall, begin practicing immediately, play a dozen or more games, practice twice a week all winter,and begin play as soon as it's warm outside, continuing for the duration of the summer, after which they start up the cycle again. At most, the typical competitive travel player spends a month to a month and a half away from the sport.
Rec players usually play a dozen or so games, more if they make all-stars. Travel players play anywhere from 50 - 100 games each year. Yet many travel players do not retain very much of a common set of skills and terminology. I do not think their rec counterparts can either.
ConclusionDespite my bad experiences in recreational softball, I think there is a logical skill progression which can be applied to develop rec players. But I'm not as ambitious as most in this respect. I think before rec can accomplish its goals, it needs to decide what those goals are. There isn't room for both a logical skill progression and the objective of winning a meaningless game. The initial skils should be throwing and fielding. (Pitchers and catchers should be segregated.) Then hitting mechanics should be worked in but with an eye towards good mechanics not in hitting slowly pitched balls as far as possible. Situational awareness has a place in rec softball but only after fundamentals have been learned. As girls age, they can learn additional aspects of play but fundamentals and mechanics cannot be ignored.
If a league endeavors to teach such fundamentals and then gradually work in more advanced topics, the rest will take care of itself. The players will enjoy themselves while becoming better softball players. They'lll stay because they are having fun. All-star teams will improve and probably develop an eye towards competing in a few tournaments. Girls will develop more of a common terminology with which to be taught because they enjoy the game and want to play more and more of it. This is how I answer the question Robert asked.
One Important Though Almost Forgotten IssueAs a final note, I should probably have spent some time discussing the single most critical issue required to be addressed in order to develop a better recreational league. That is coach training and development. I'm not talking about the minimal requirement for safety training or some other program in which coaches are reminded to put the girls first or something along those lines. I'm talking about a sophisticated program under which coaches are taught the fundamental skills they will be teaching their players.
It is often difficult for leagues to line up enough coaches for their teams in the various age groups. Nobody has any time nor the will to do more than they already do. But if you want to see real improvement, coaching seminars are the only way. These seminars should focus on age appropriate skills and the manner in which they are taught. Coaches should be given drills to perform at practices and basically be coached on how to coach. While it is entirely understandable that it is difficult for leagues to find coaches and coaches to find time, attendance at these seminars should be closely monitored. Later, during the season, coaches should be asked about follow through on skill progression drills in their practices.
The most important aspect of running any league is communication with the parents of participants. When the league establishes some sort of logical skill progression, that should be communicated to the parents and a feedback mechanism for their concerns and observations should be established. This should be written and it should remain anonymous so as to avoid the kind of off-field conflicts it might otherwise engender.
Parents are the greatest resource any league has. If parents are told that their 8 year old should be taught proper throwing mechanics and they never observe their coach teaching these in practice, they should have a mechanism by which they can communicate that to the league. If parents observe any of the sort of nonsense I observed in my earlier comments above, they ought to be able to write the league and complain about the conduct of coaches. The league should not so much seek to smooth the ruffled feathers of such parents as it should take the comments under advisement and act on them if they are repeated from multiple sources.
Similarly, other coaches should be able to report observations which raise alarms. If a coach sees the same four 10U girls always playing infield while the others rotate through the outfield, that could be reported. If a coach observes another continually making several girls not make throws in order to avoid errors that could also be reported. If a coach observed one team walking the best hitters of another in order to pitch to the lesser skilled girls, that should be reported to the league and acted upon.
Leagues should keep records of parental and coach concerns and questions, and use them for the betterment of the league. The entire pool of coaches should be graded much the way umpires are. Appropriate steps should be taken to address concerns and move the best coaches into managerial roles while removing managers and coaches who are there just to record wins.
You can skip all of my advice on improving the rec league, if you want. If you know of a good resource which more directly answers the question put to me, please tell me where it is and I'll list it if I agree with the contents. You can leave the status quo alone and just continue in the manner you and your league always have. But if you do, please, please, please don't write to me and tell me how upset you are that 1) your league stinks, 2) your daughter didn't make the school team despite being an all-star for ten straight years, or 3) you wish there was some sort of alternative to recreational and travel softball.Labels: Youth recreational softball
 
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