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| SOFTBALL LINKS |
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Humpty Dumpty
by Dave
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
When we teach complex skills like fielding the grounder and making a throw afterwards, we break it into little tiny, easily digestable pieces, especially when working with the very young. I have seen coaches from 8U through high school have their kids perform drills to emphasize the tiny pieces so as to either teach the inexperienced younger kids or attempt to cure mechanical flaws in older girls. These techniques are important and they do work. But, in a speed game, at some point, you've got to bring everything together in a fluid, quick motion.
When I teach throwing to 8 and 9 year olds, I often have them stand with their front shoulders pointing in my directions and their hands together at their waists. They then move up into the "scarecrow" position with the ball exposed to the sky, then step slightly towards the target while bring the throwing hand forward, etc. This is a multi-part action with all sorts of stopping points so a coach can judge whether each piece is done properly. But that process of stage one, two, etc. can have some serious detrimental results if we don't at some point unteach the stopping and lack of fluidity.
There is a high school coach nearby who at some point got sick of watching otherwise decent fielders blow grounders because they didn't watch the ball into their gloves. His resolution for this was to run a drill in which one girl rolled a grounder to another and the girl fielding the grounder would watch the ball into her glove to the point that her pony tail would flip over to the front side of her head. the ball was pulled to the waist and then the girl would pop into the throwing position. It should come as no surprise to anyone that if a girl were to do this and then follow it up with my throwing technique with all its pause points, that if a slapper were to hit a ball into play, she would make second base before the throw arrived at first trying to get her out!
I do think girls need to watch balls into their gloves, pay attention to their body posture while fielding grounders, and make good four seam throws to bases with their bodies properly aligned. But I'm just not willing to have girls continue in their softball careers while not getting anyone out! So, at some point, we must emphasize speed and quickness over technique.
I often tell the story of attending a clinic run by Howard Kobata in which two girls were participating in a catch and throw drill. One girl had a weaker arm. The other had an absolute canon. I would guess that the difference between the two girls' throwing speed was ten miles per hour or more. Kobata fired two balls simultaneously to the two girls standing pretty much side by side. Both balls were caught simultaneously. Both girls threw the ball accurately to their target. The girl with the weaker arm threw a weak throw. The girl with the strong arm fired a laser which was barely perceptible to the human eye. But you know what? The weak throw arrived a measurable time before the laser.
These girls ran through this drill several times. The laser thrower never beat the weak armed girl. Sometimes, the weak throw arrived quite a bit faster. It is difficult to judge time in such a setting but I would hazard a guess that on a few reps, the slower throw arrived at its target a full two tenths of a second, perhaps more, sooner than the hard chuck. Are you understanding? The canon-armed girl was going to get fewer kids out at first than the weak armed girl.
To drive home the fact even a little further, I attended one of those professional softball clinics at which Natasha Watley and Andrea Duran were playing the field. I had obviously seen both on TV but you don't really get much of a sense of the abilities of these two ladies on the tube. You really have to see them in person to appreciate their skills. One of the things which struck me was the speed of their throws. Both are very quick with their footwork and get rid of the ball extremely quickly. But in the throws I saw them make, neither had a particularly strong arm. I've certainly seen harder throws made at the college, Gold and high school levels. I may have seen harder throws at 16U and, in rare cases, perhaps even 14U. But in terms of infielder pop times - the time from the ball touching one glove to another, nothing I have ever seen came even close. When these girls field a grounder, you can blink and before your eyes are completely open, the ball is pounding the first baseman's glove.
The point is, what matters in softball is not so much the strength of one's arm but rather the total elapsed time from glove to glove. Having a good arm and sound mechanics matters. But nothing matters when the ball arrives too late and the kid who can get it to its target faster is better regardless of strength of arm. So that begs the question, how do we learn to be quicker?
The first stage of fixing anything, I suppose is awareness. We have instilled all these pause points in girls which cause these tiny hesitations and it is our job to fix them. When you're doing a skill like fielding a grounder and making a throw, you probably are not really aware of your minor hesitations. You do the skill as you were taughter and as you age up and become more athletic, the pause points become less perciptible. But they are still there. You don't necessarily feel your slowness. I think you have to see them first before you believe they are there.
If you can take a video which shows a girl herself while fielding an ordinary grounders and making a throw, that should help. &n bsp; In lieu of having video equipment handy, running a group drill which shows several girls being slower than they ought to be can also help. But sometimes that can be uncomfortable for all the girls in the drill.
You have to be careful to prepare the girls for what they are about to witness and make sure each and everyone gets about equal measure of criticism. Howard Kobata doesn't precisely practice this technique and I'm not about to criticize his methods. Just suffice it to say that people pay for Kobata's criticism and he gets to go home afterwards. You, as a coach or parent, have a more complicated environment in which you must continue to work with these players in other settings. So perhaps harsh criticism is not the technique you'll use. Still, your objective must be to demonstrate that they are not as fast as they could be.
Once a kid understands that she is slower than she can be, she is in the right mindset to fix some of the problems. Now it is time to conduct some drills to target speed. The first one I like to do involves three girls with five balls. So I call it the five ball drill. You could use three balls or you could use ten. But my experience is five quick reps is the right amount.
One girl feeds balls to the fielder. Another is positioned about 40-60 feet away. The feeder tosses balls to the fielder at about her waist who catches the ball and makes a throw in one fluid motion. The filder should take no steps before releasing the ball. She gets into a good ready position with her glove and throwing hand in front of her. The feeder tosses a ball, she catches and fires towards the target - but accuracy of the throw is not the objective early on. As soon as she makes the throw, the fielder gets back into ready position. As soon as the feeder sees the ball hit the receiver's glove, she tosses another. This should be a fairly hectic pace. And it continues for the five balls. After that, the three girls rotate positions and repeat the drill.
With only three girl needs to run the drill, you can split the team up into say four groups of three. if you have odd persons out, that's OK too. But the person who is not in the drill should pay close attention to what the filder is doing so she can become even more aware of pause points of others and hopefully herself. You can also modify this drill into a race among your various groups of players while awarding points to the winners and perhaps a reward or something along those lines.
I would add some variation on the basic drill of taking a ball at one's waist in order to make the drill more realistic. Have the second round of it involve a throw to the left or right and then switch to the other side. Balls could be rolled or bounced like grounders. They could be thrown over the head of the fielder to mimick a pop-up. You get the idea. This drill is a good start but their are plenty of others.
Another drill I do, this time for ordinary catching and throwing is to place two girls apart, facing each other, behind a line made by cones, about 60 feet apart. I put two sets of these girls alongside each other and make the rest of the team spread out along the outer edges so as to get a good view while not at risk of being struck by errant throws. The two girls in each team throw the ball back and forth a total of ten times. The winning team stays on the field while the losers join their teammates on the sidelines. A new team is brought out to compete. This drill can be a lot of fun and breaks up the monotony of ordinary practices.
One element you want to make sure you address whuile running this drill is sometimes a couple girls, maybe the best girls, will team up and stay out on the field a long time. Also, other girls will choose to stay with one particular person when their turn comes up. You really want to mix and match the girls so they get used to throwing with their entire team. So don;t leave one team out there for more than five iterations and make sure you pick the teams so you can mix it up more than would happen naturally. Also make sure you emphasize accuracy and quickness technique in this drill.
Two of the common plays which require quickness, aside from fielding a hit ball, are those in which 1) an infielder might be taking a cutoff throw, turning and firing to a base which is in back of her; 2) any fielder grabs a ball while facing in one direction and then must turn in a new direction to make the throw. For instance, a fielder might take a throw at first and then need to fire to second. Perhaps someone might get a throw in from the outfield for a tag play at third and then need to make another throw to another base afterwards.
In the case of repeated cutoff throws, what I like to do is line up the team in two or more lines extending from one baseline out to near the outfield fence, spaced about 50-60 feet apart. That means lines of about four people. The balls start at one end and are thrown to each succeeding player down the line and then back to the starting point. In this drill, coaches need to show proper technique for taking and making cutoff throws. The target for each throw should be at the head of to just past the glove side of the target fielder. The receiving fielder tries to make the catch in front of her face on her glove side while simultaneously turning and throwing to the next fielder. I don't suppose you need me to explain how to take a cutoff and make the follow-up throw. My point rather is to emphasize that this needs to be done as quickly as possible and proper technique, along with quickness, is the key to winning the race.
In terms of speeding up ordinary infield catching and throwing, there are several drills I like to run. The first involves placing a fielder at each of the bases. Balls are thrown in one of two direction around the bases. The easiest is to throw from home to third, then second, then first and back to home. This involves standing in a ready position next to the bag facing the direction from which the throw will be received with hands extended in front of each fielder. the throw is received and with no footwork at all, the fielder makes the throw to the next base. if a throw is offline, the fielder must move to the ball and catch it in front of her, then follow up with a throw involving no step. The ball goes around like that as many times as you like or for a set number of times and repeated reps. Then you switch in four new girls who do the same.
Next you change the direction of the ball on your next set of reps to go from home to first, second, third and back to home. This involves catching the ball and then making a pop (very slight leap) to the throwing direction. This is an important technique but I don't want to spend time on it since most know it anyways. The point is to make the pop and throw quickly and accurately, not necessarily as strongly as possible. After each of these, I add a couple of reps in which say the ball goes around one way once or twice and then back the other way.
After each type of these (one way, the other, both), I like to break out the stopwatch and time each rep. I might tell one "team" to go around twice or three times and clock it. Then the next "team" goes and we compare times. A couple iterations of this and I think the girls get competitive about their team's times. That usually shows up in improved times the second and third clocking.
In addition to this and the other drills, I also like to do something during ordinary infield practice. Most teams do something long these lines but I have suffered through enough practices in which no complex throwing takes place that I'll explain what I do. You set your infield out there with players at each position and run through your ordinary grounders, pop-ups, etc. and have the girls make their throws. I believe in fielders fielding as many balls as possible to improve technique. But after everyone has done their necessary reps, you begin calling out follow-up throws after the initial one.
Grounder to third, throw to first, back to home, then down to third (or second). You can instruct the girls to field a ball, throw to first, then to home and then back to where the fielder is covering before you hit a ball into play. As an alternative, if you have your wits about you, you can call the next base to throw to as the first or second throw is in the air. Say there is an ordinary grounder to third and she's going to first, you might start yelling "home, home, home" as the original throw is coming out of the third baseman's hand. Then as the fielder covering first releases the ball to home, you call out "two, two two." You can continue with this indefinitely or perhaps have them make three or four throws after each ball is hit into play. A variation on this is to have each grounder followed by around the horn in one direction or the other. variation is the key. You want the girls to make as many varied throws as possible.
Another good catch and throw drill involv es four players, each starting at one of the bases. The ball is thrown in one of the two directions around the bases. The girl at home runs to first after throwing the ball to first. The girl at first runs to cover home after throwing the ball to second. The girl at second runs to cover third after throwing the ball there. The girl at third runs to cover second after throwing the ball to home. That's one iteration. Then each girl continues catching and throwing to the next base while running back and forth from either first to home and back again, or second to third and back again. You can have the ball go the other direction if you like. You can switch the bases from and to each girl runs.
What generally happens in this drill when it is run right is girls have to make catches on the run, turn and throw, then run hard to get back to the base to cover. They get exhausted and compete to get into good position to make the catch and throw quickly.
As a final drill, I admit to stealing this one from Kobata as well as many good teams I have observed practicing. The drill is one I have heard called alternately "four corners" or "the star." It involves placing a fielder at each of the three bases and two at home. The first person at home gets the ball. She throws down to secxond and then runs towards that base. The girl at second throws to first and then runs there. The girl at first throws to third and follows her throw. The girl at third throws the ball back to home where the second girl is waiting and then runs there. The ball continues around the diamond indefinitely and as girls get tired - they do quickly - I replace one with somebody on the sidelines. Eventually the whole team gets involved in the drill with girls stepping out when they are winded and new ones taking their places. i try to not allow the girls to go into the drill in a particular order since, again, I want everyone to take and make throws from and to everyone else.
You can get a lot of complex throwing in with this drill in very little time. We have actually seen entire teams get winded and exhausted inside of ten minutes. If you are motivated to do so, you can use this drill as a sort of last game of the day preparation and have the girls continue as long as 20 minbutes to half an hour. But I've never gone quite that long.
I believe I have mentioned many of these drills before in writings. The difference is today I offer them within the context of a discussionb on speed and quickness. In this game, success and failure on defense are often measured by elapsed time from one glove to another, infield "pop time" if you will. We break Humpty Dumpty into a million little pieces to perfect techniques. But we must put Humpty Dumpty back together again in order to give girls the tool they need to succeed, quickness.Labels: defense, fielding, kobata, throwing
 
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