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The Softball Classroom
by Dave
Monday, November 10, 2008
I want to propose an approach to winter workouts which I think many will consider a little unorthodox. It is unorthodox mostly in the sense that few travel ball teams routinely do it. Yet, if you think about it, it makes complete sense and is really a very simple concept. Sometimes what is simple and makes sense alludes us in our day to day, month to month struggles to prepare a team for competition. Yet standing back, using our common sense, and doing something simple, yet unorthodox, often yields more results than we would have anticipated.
The problem is working the team out to get them ready for the spring in sometimes rather cramped quarters. At least for those of us living in cold climates, that is often the most difficult task. We deal with the problem by renting all sorts of expensive or inadequate indoor spaces, raising money to pay for the space, and improvising any available facilities to get a little work in. In a few cases in which the leadership of the team or organization is well hooked up, we get more than adequate facilities for modest prices. But most of the time, we struggle to fit meaningful drills into overpriced, tight spaces. We often fail in our task and then, when we are again outdoors, finally cover most of the ground we hoped to during the winter.
I have been involved with several teams which went inside after fall with high hopes of making real progress. By March, just about every team is ecstatic to get back outside so they can conduct real practices. They spent significant time crafting a list of drills, got inside and, for one reason or another, had to eliminate many or most of them because the space could not accomodate the work they wanted to do. They did some important skills work indoors but always ended up feeling that the physical constraints prevented a complete job. The team is not ready when they finally get back outside in the spring.
I don't have a magic potion to make indoor work more meaningful. I have no technological device or special list of drills which improve a team's ability to conduct practice in a 40 by 40 foot, ten foot high space, run batting practice while using baseball pitching machines in small, cramped netted cages, or otherwise prepare a team to go out onto a real field after trying to work on skills in some tiny elementary school gymnasium. But I'd like to bring up an obvious approach we sometimes forget about in this sport, especially at lower level youth tournament levels.
What I want to discuss is the usefulness of conducting classroom work. What I mean is the team, rather than running physical drills, sits around a table in a small room and is taught important things about the game in general, specific strategies planned to be employed by the team, signs and signals, or just about anything else you can imagine which requires mental preparation rather than physical.
In order to do classroom work, you obviously need a place to function as a classroom. But such space is often far easier to arrange than other kinds of space. I don't suggest getting a side room at some Fudruckers, to take over the meeting room at a Frozen Ropes or another athletic facility. There are too many distractions and you'll lose the kids while you are trying to instruct them on some important point. Small church basements can suffice and are often pretty cheap to arrange. Sometimes the local school will allow you to use or rent a classroom. And with just say 12 girls, you might even be able to conduct some classroom sessions at one of your player's homes. What you need is enough space for the girls not to be in each other's laps, a little quiet and no distractions out in the open.
The second consideration is organization and conduct. Coaches cannot wing classroom sessions as they often do indoor and outdoor physical practices. If the coaches need to discuss what they want to do next, it is easy when doing physical practices to send the girls on a busy task so you can talk it over. You cannot do that in a classroom. You have to be organized and have a lesson plan. The best time coaches will spend is in a pre-classroom meeting in which they hash out what needs to get covered inside the classroom, develop a "lesson plan" and then break out the responsibilities for who is going to discuss what. An hour spent in an initial coaches meeting will pay off in saving several wasted hours in the classroom.
Coaches most also consider the nature of their audience, their students, their team. 12U girls have much better attention spans than fidgety 10s. 14s are more mature than 12s but they also are far more social, not to mention better at not paying attention during class time. 16s can sort of resent being forced to sit in a classroom on a Saturday, and shut up and listen when the context is softball. 18s generally have a better understanding of the necessity of classroom type work but you need to hold their attention too.
Just as you try to make things move along rapidly in a physical practice, you must also keep it moving in the classroom. If a couple players get bored, you are going to lose the whole team pretty soon thereafter. If you end up spending too much time on one subject or one type of subject, somebody is going to get bored and then perhaps start disrupting the whole group. In the classroom, you can't allow someone to disrupt the group and while you certainly can remove someone who is deliberately being disruptive, you also have to take some of the blame on yourselves for not keeping everyone's interest.
I suggest establishing a policy for the conduct of classroom work right from the first sitdown. Let the team know what your goals are for these sessions, that you understand they are used to softball practice being more physical and fun than mental and boring, that you will try to not make the material boring, but that sometimes you may not keep their interest and in those cases, they are not allowed to fool around or talk among themselves. In fact, once we get started (when a coach says, "OK, let's get started"), there is no more talking among yourselves. The only talking allowed is A) the coaches, B) players asking or answering a question, or C) when somebody says something confusing or you didn't hear what was said.
Coaches could allow for five to ten minutes before starting to allow the girls to chat with each other and then, after the session, either plan some social stuff or at least allow the kids to chat for a while before running home. If you use pizza parties for team chemistry building, have one of these immediately after classroom sessions. That provides motivation for the girls to focus during the sessio,n to get to the pizza party afterwards more quickly.
Another policy position is to not allow players to be late. Perhaps the most disruptive thing that can happen during a clasroom session involves the "student" walking in five to ten minutes after you have started. She comes in and everything grinds to a halt. She takes off her coat, looks around for a seat, finds one near her best friend, sits down and chats briefly with the girl she just finished texting with for four hours straight. This process takes about 5 minutes and in the end, you may actually be able to get started again but you must now go back over the ten minutes worth of material you covered before the disruption! One player arriving late has cost you 15 minutes and you may never again get the kids' attention. So, "we start at 6:00. You must arrive by 6:00. If you are late or your parent is pulling into the parking spot at 5:59, please turn around and go home because you will not be allowed into the classroom. Of course you don't need to be perfectly strict about this policy since you aren't actually going to start until 6:10, after the girls have chatted for a few minutes. But what you do not want to habitually happen is the same girl walking in at 6:15 each and every session.
It is always the same girls who come late to these things, as well as practices. That's completely inconsiderate and shows disdain for teammates. But it happens. As an aside, coaches should always remember that more than half the time, it is not the kid's fault. Usually, it is the parent's fault for not recognizing that their kid is always disorganized at that hour or because the parent themselves sees arriving late as acceptable. And browbeating the kid usually does not achieve the desired result. You can certainly tell the kid that "you're late" but you also need to make the parent understand that their kid is repeatedly late, this dirupts the whole team, and it cannot continue. It is not fair to the team and needs to be rectified. Please come on time or your daughter will not be allowed into the class.
Of course, lateness when addressed by the coach is often met with the litany of excuses. "She has ballet before practice." "We needed to hire a special tutor for her and this is the only time she can come." "The dog got out and was raiding the neighbors chicken coop - I couldn't leave until I got her back into the house, sorry." We've all heard all the excuses at one time or another. Lateness is not allowed, excuse or no excuse. This is not an easy task but, if you want to accomplish anything, you must address it, particularly when we are dealing with classroom settings.
By addressing lateness and rectifying the situation, if you can, you are really doing the kid a favor. Many high school and college teachers will not tolerate lateness. Work bosses will often dock a worker for lateness. Many sports coaches will punish repeated latecomers, sometimes severely. The 9 or 10 year old who walks into practice or a classroom late repeatedly and is embarrassed at that age about tardiness will come to learn that she can survive being late - the world does not come crashing down on her when she is late. Thereafter, she'll not be particularly worried about being on time until, long after the habit is established, her high school coach benches her for it. So, when you consider all that time you spent trying to teach her to field a grounder or make a strong, quick throw just so she would make her high school team, consider dealing with her lateness for the same reason.
Lastly, while I understand that there is a value to taking notes, that value is lessened when too many notes are required to be written down by students. Coaches need to prepare materials for their players, perhaps even structure them into a notebook by running out to the office superstore and buying some floppy folders and then handing out materials which are already hole punched for easy insertion.
Everything you might talk about in these sessions is capable of being put down in some logical form on paper. Usually you can make copies fairly cheaply. Folders will cost the team less than a dollar apiece and can form the backbone of what is essentially a playbook. If your players do not really need to make notes but rather can simply look at papers you hand out, your classroom work will progress much more quickly which should help you to keep everyone's attention.
Regarding the classroom sessions themselves, let's remember that all human beings learn through repetition. In fastpitch softball, we use repetition more than any other device. You field 50 grounders, take 50 swings, make 100 throws, etc. We understand the concept of "motor memory" and no matter what the softball environment, we use the tool of repetition to improve players' skills. While neuro-muscular pathways do not get worked in the classroom, we still need to use repetition.
For reasons that are unclear to me, American education has moved away from repetition. Teachers don't want to utilize any sort of boring, tedious drills like multiplication tables. They seek instead to teach "reasoning" to achieve an answer.
Early on, my wife and I recognized the shortcomings of this approach and worked to supplement what our kids were doing with respect to, for example, multiplication tables. We signed up (and paid through the nose) for one of those supplemental self-study courses which involves repeated, consistent drilling. At first our approach caused some problems when, for example, the math teachers wanted my kids to explain how they arrived at the answer of 56 for the problem, what is 8 times 7. We actually had to teach our kids to say things like "well, 8 is an even number so the answer has to be even, and seven plus seven is 14 and 4 fourteens is 56." My kids got bored with this so after a while we told them to answer, "my parents made me commit the multiplication tables to memory so when I look on the paper and see 7 times 8, my brain automatically spits out 56." Obviously, our kids tests sometimes caused us to need to have a parent-teacher conference to explain the smug answers but, in the end, their answers got them the grades they were seeking.
I digress but my point is repetition is necessary in the classroom whether that classroom is mathematics or fastpitch softball. Repetition is undeniably boring when not conducted thoughtfully. Our kids' math repetition involved 15 minutes a day, 5 days per week, 50 weeks per year. It was short and frequent. The same concept should be employed in softball classroom work.
If, for example, you are going to go over signs to the batter, you should do that work in every classroom session but for a short duration each time. The same can be said for each particular important situational defense play you want to employ. We'll get to some specific "lessons" momentarily but for now, I just want you to understand that we do not want to go over first and third once in session number 3 and never come back to it again. We must repeat specific lessons several times so the kids actually learn them or the whole effort is one big waste of time.
We must consider attention spans when we develop lessons. It doesn't so much matter whether you are contemplating an outdoor, on the field, defensive drill for bunts, or a discussion of how we defense bunts in the classroom. We cannot run a single drill or engage in a single discussion for an hour straight. Particularly in the classroom, you must go over material fairly quickly for a short duration, take a deep breath and then move to another, perhaps related subject.
You may spend more time initially when you first go over something just as it takes longer to set things up the first time we do some particular outdoor drill. But definitely the next time you go over this material, you need to move quickly and go on to something else. All the while, you need to consider your players' attention spans. This pertains to each segement in the lesson plan as well as the length of the overall classroom session.
I do not think you should stick with one subject for longer than a long inning - 10 to 15 minutes. It would be best if you could get through a topic in a normal half inning - 3 to 5 minutes. And the whole indoor classroom session cannot be longer than a game. Ideally, it would be an hour or less. You can't get anything real done in under a half hour, probably more like 45 minutes. So a full class might be 45 minutes to an hour - schedule an hour and a half, and plan to finish classrom work in 45 minutes. Give the kids five to ten minutes to get in, sit down and settle. Then announce, "let's get started, wse have a lot to cover and the better you poay attention, the sonner we'll get done which will allow you girls to talk and fool arounds." Plan something afterwards like pizza or Twister, if you can. Then plan say 5 distinct subjects to go over during that session. Now do it and hopefully finish in 45 minutes.
At this point, I think it would be best if I started getting into specifics about what a classroom session might consist of.
The first, most obvious, discussion is offensive signs and strategies. For whatever reason, signs often get less attention than they deserve. We bring them up in the fall, give the kids a few key signs at one of our practices, and then use them at a couple games. Sometime during the winter, we circulate a list of signs via some Word document, ask the parents to print it out and go over them with their kids. Some parents do and some do not. Then we get into our first tournament and the batter doesn't so much as look at the coach to get the sign! The second batter looke down and gets the sign, calls timeout and runs to the coach to ask what the heck all that stuff means. Then, at our next practice, we spend five minutes going over signs again. At our next tournament, we get upset about nobody looking down for signs, this kid or that apprently getting it but not doing what you told her, etc., etc. and so forth.
In the classroom, it is important to tell the kids that they must look for signs on every pitch. Very quickly, you might explain that batters are allowed to take one foot out of the box after each pitch - but often not two unless you get chased out of the box by a pitch or play. Tell the girls you want them, after every pitch, to take out their front foot and look down to the coach fo the sign. Sure, often, there is no sign or the only one is "you're on your own" but they must look every time and then signal back to the coach that they received it.
That discussion, in case you've got a stopwatch or are otherwise trying to gauge subject duration should last about a minute. It should be repeated at every classroom session. Next go over the signs beginning with indicators and wipe-offs. If your kids learn nothing else, they should learn to always look for a sign, know when one is actually being put on, via indicator, and know that the coach can erase one via this third type of sign. Then you can hand out page one of their notebook, the signs and put that into the folder. You are two to three minutes into the session, you have gone over the basics of signs and handed out the signs. Now, very quickly go over them. Then maybe a one minute quiz to make sure everyone gets the idea. "OK, gang, that's it for that. We will definitely go over these again - don't lose your notebook, go over these at home."
Remember, you will go over these again in future sessions. At a later date, the whole thing should probably be done in under two minutes. One day, you might split the group into two or three "teams," tell them to put away their notebooks and then start giving them signs, asking what did I just signal you to do and award points to each "team" according to how many they get right.
Right after offensive signs, you might go into some more advanced offensive topics like your particular team's offensive philosophy. Some of you parents and coaches may not be aware that many teams actually have a specific philosophy. Some of you may not realize that the team you coach actually has a specific philosophy. What many coaches fail to recognize is that the girls on their team, unless they have been together for two years or more, may get confused over offensive philosophies.
One girl, new to the team, runs between bases in under 3 seconds. She burns. She's like lightning. She also didn't get on base very much last year on her rec all-star team. Her coaches were not particularly sophisticated. They had never seen a delayed steal, let alone run one. They were not aggressive and didn't like small ball. They wanted the girls to hit. So while this girl was sitting in the dugout after striking out 8 times one day, the best she could do was watch the game. And when another girl, her best friend, did something aggressive on the bases and was thrown out, the only thing this really fast girl learned was, you get yelled at if you are overly aggressive. Now she is on your team and she carries that baggage with her. You picked her because you want her to steal, steal, steal, and then steal some more. But she won't unless you tell her that nobody on this team is going to get yelled at if they are aggressive on the bases. And you'll need to be specific. You'll need rules of thumb everyone can use in games.
I remember watching a game in which a runner arrived at third with no outs in the first inning. The coach whispered something to her. He had recognized that the catcher was overly aggressive but didn't have a particularly good arm. He also saw that the third baseman had some difficulty catching balls thrown to her, even more difficulty getting the ball out of her glove after she caught it, and had a weak inaccurate arm. On the first pitch, which was a ball, the runner on third got a little far off the bag. The catcher got up ran a few steps and then whipped the ball down to third where the thirdbaseman was standing waiting for it and the shortstop had also come to cover the bag. The throw, if the runner on third had returned to the bag, would have beaten her. The third baseman and SS bumped into each other and knocked the ball to the ground in front of the third baseman who picked it up with her glove, struggled to get it out into her throwing hand, and threw a weak throw over the catcher's head ... after the girl from third had crossed the plate.
I was standing behind the offensive team's dugout. After the cheering was over, I heard the bench coach call over the girl who had just scored. He began yelling at her. He said, "DON'T YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN. YOU
ALMOST GOT PICKED OFF. YOU ALMOST COST US A RUN. DON'T EVER DO THAT AGAIN."
The third base coach called to his other coach, "Bob, that was a play. I told her to do that." The bench coach said, "LIKE HELL IT WAS. SHE ALMOST GOT PICKED OFF. I DON'T EVER WANT ANYONE DOING THAT AGAIN." Later, I expect the coaches had it out and came to some agreement. But most likely they never said a word to the kids either collectively or individually. The next time they face a pitcher who doesn't pay attention, a catcher who turns her back, or otherwise find themselves in a situation in which a delayed steal might work, they are not going to recognize that what they did on that day is what caused the play to fail. It wasn't the baserunner's hesitation or lack of speed. They are going to fail on a play and blame the wrong thing. If you do classroom sessions, you have a great opportunity to get everyone on the same page with respect to offensive aggression by explaining it clearly.
Rules of thumb are excellent tools which can be brought up in the classroom, discussed at length, and explained if kids are not clear about them. For example, I am involved with a team on which nobody is so slow that they should not always go when a ball gets behind the catcher. So, having already taught how to lead out on the field, I want to discuss my first rule of thumb. "Girls, after you get your lead, I want you to look and see if the catcher has missed the ball. If she has and it is not on the ground right in front of her, advance a base. You are to go every time. If you're out, you're out but you must go every time. If you hesitate because you are not sure and then are thrown out, you will get yelled at extensively the next practice and then everyone on the team will take turns throwing balls hard at you. So ... just go."
I won't try to exhaust a list of all the rules of thumb you might bring up but they should be consistent with your overall philosophy, be explained alongside the explanation of that philosophy, and provided on paper to be inserted into the notebook. By the way, this is an excellent point to raise the concept of times when rules and strategies might be altered to fit a game situation. You might tell the girls that on occassion, we may play against some really good teams. In those games, we may alter some of our strategies in order to score runs and win. These rules we gave you are always implemented but at some games, we might tell you not to do this or that.
Our next subject area could involve defensive plays against aggressive baserunning teams. For example, I like our kids to play a bunt with runner on first a particular way. First and third pinch in and play the ball. The throw always goes to first with the 2B covering. SS takes second. The fielder who didn't get the bunt proceeds to cover third. Outfielders know their backup responsibilities. The 2B catches the throw, hopefully recording the out and then she immediately throws the ball to the SS covering second. "Girls, that's every time, not just when you think of it or believe you have a shot to get the runner at second. We throw to second every time on every bunt with runner at only first." Then you can explain why and what you hope to accomplish. This can be covered in about a minute and then you move on to what to do with runners on first and second, etc. And, again, give them something on paper they can refer to in the future.
First and third, as well as other, situations can be addressed in the classroom. Sure, you need to do drills. You need to run these things out on the field. But it is far easier and far more productive to run drills and plays when you fully understand what is going on and what you hope to accomplish. Go over these in the classroom and your practices will be better.
Another subject area I know I need to cover in the classroom is pitch calling. About half or more of our roster is pitchers or catchers, at least at one time or another. I might split the group up into two, with non-Ps and Cs going with one coach and all our battery mates coming with me. But that is disruptive in and of itself. Instead, I could have the other girls sit in on a pitch calling session.
It isn't as if pich calling occurs outside the game they play. Why not educate them as well? Why not clue them into the signs and thoughts regarding pitch calls? In later years, they very well may find themselves playing middle infield, looking in for signs, adjusting their play to the pitch, signaling outfielders, or being on the receiving end of those signals. We might just as well tell them what all is going on between coach, pitcher and catcher, let them know the signs too, and further their understanding of what goes on in the game they play. Besides, we are going to move rapidly and not bore anyone. And to a girl who has no idea what is going on between coach, catcher and pitcher, this should be fairly interesting. It will keep her attention.
The list of what you might go over in classroom sessions goes on and on. I repeat that repetition is as important in the classroom as it is on the field. You should plan multiple classroom sessions because they are cheap, pretty short, cover important ground, teach the game to the girls, provide critical information for winning and generally improving your game, and are something which is practiced at high levels in a variety of sports, not to mention most career and business situations when these girls are adults. When you plan out multiple classroom sessions, make it interesting when you are going over ground you went over in lessons 1, 3, 4, etc. Be creative. Have some "quizzes" and games to make sure the learning has sunk in deep.
Do some things which are not strictly speaking conventional classroom activites like watching a tape of an Olympic or college game. Conduct team building exercises. Play twister afterwards or have a pizza party. Make it fun but make it productive time. Teach them the game. Teach them teamwork. Teach them something more than how to field a grounder.
To sports fans, particularly football fans, we all know that athletes at high levels of team sports are forced to sit in classrooms to watch game films, go over plays on the blackboard, or do any number of different things. Basketball, soccer and football players do lots of blackboard work discussing plays. Softball is just as complicated yet we seldom do much classroom work. During the springtime when the temperature outside is 70, we should want to get out and sweat. We shouldn't want or need to sit down indoors to discuss plays. That's especially true if we spent 4, 6 or 8 sessions in January and February doing this. We raise so much money to rent decent space when we can find any. But we forget that we can accomplish much just by sitting down in a room and discussing a lot of what we'll be talking about and doing on the field.
By the way, this is a practice. Parents are not welcome. They can sit in the car but, even if there is free space, they cannot come in and sit down.Labels: coaching, game strategy, pre-season preparation, youth tournament teams
 
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