Little League Coaching Tips

[bobahunter]

I have seen tidbits here and there on the forum about tips for little league coaching but thought I would start a thread. A little back story, I am going into my third year of coaching my son's team and we are leaving behind coach pitch and moving into kid pitch (3rd/4th grade) this spring. I coached in previous district where the high school baseball coach was really involved and went as far as developing a program that he wanted the coaches to follow. I found this helpful being a beginner coach and not knowing much about teaching mechanics, etc. Now we live in a new town that the high school is really hands off and there isn't a structure for development other than some basic drills that are suggested for a practice.

Would any coaches here have any suggestions for online drill programs (paid or free) that have really helped their little league program? I am looking for something like a series of content that could be used at our level now and progress through to the 8th grade levels. I find the drills that explain the reasons for mechanics much more helpful from a coaching standpoint. I like to be able to explain to the kids why we do certain drills and what we are looking to get out of it.

There is a ton of content online, but I would like to get a feel for what other beginner coaches at our grade level use to narrow it down a bit.

 

[MrTPlush]

Quit while there is still a chance. 

[homer]

My buddy coaches his kids team and they are right about the same age as yours. I'll see what he does. He didn't play past little league so I'm kind of curious myself how he coaches.

[RobDeer 45]

Spot on MrTPlush!!!

 

Excellent idea to start a thread on little league coaching.  I've been coaching my two oldest kids the last several years and took the jump to head coaching last year, which included All Stars for the oldest.  I was hesitant because I thought I needed to wait until they got older but it was a lot of fun!  If you have any specific questions, go ahead and shoot, I'd be glad to help the best I can.  This will be a good place to come back to as the season gets going.

 

As for videos to watch, I'd maybe start with the little league YouTube channel.  They have a lot of basic how to videos on there.  I've also found some good content from this page,  but he has a lot of videos.  There is so much online content and beliefs on how to do things that it can get confusing.

https://www.youtube.com/@UltimateBaseballTraining/featured

 

The biggest thing is there are going to be so many different skill levels in little league.  Some kids at the kid pitch level will still not be able to catch a ball well, while others are starting to figure things out and need more detailed instruction.  Last year was my oldest's first year of kid pitch.  My middle son is going from rookie ball, which is machine pitch (they use a tee if they miss the first 3 times and everyone hits every inning, no rules or scoring because everyone scores every inning), to A ball which is machine pitch but they are playing baseball rules.

 

Best of luck with coaching this year!

[bobahunter]

Thanks for the link. This will be a great place to start. 

You are right, these next two years are going to be interesting especially since we have 3rd and 4th grade together. And since this is a community education league we seem to get 1 or 2 kids a year that have never played.  

I did have a pre-season question that is geared toward getting volunteers. What works in your leagues to get parents to volunteer to help coach? Do you have to do league deposits or something in the by-laws about parent participation? I'm just interested in what other leagues do to get those numbers up.

[RobDeer 45]

I would say our league is really well run.  As for coaching, we have volunteer hours that everyone has to do.  You write a big check, maybe $250 per kid, at the beginning of the year.  If you don't complete your volunteer hours they cash the check.  Coaching takes care of the full amount, and for multiple kids.  I think that's smart because the coaches put in a lot of time.  Other things to do are concessions, field prep, they used to have umping on there, volunteering for uniform and equipment distribution, and then of course clerical things.  If you make that check big enough, you'll get plenty of volunteers!

[PlayerHader]

TheHittingVault.com is a great resource. Lots of drills and other resources. I used it when I coached high school softball. There are a ton of free videos and resources out there, but the problem is a lot of different drills and way of teaching things contradict each other. TheHittingVault isn’t free, but it’s comprehensive and consistent. It’s definitely not for everybody.

 

 

My son moves up to 10U this year, and I will be coaching my daughter’s 8U team. After 10 years of coaching high school varsity, I’m both very excited and a little apprehensive to work with these young gals!

[RobDeer 45]

I thought I'd check in to see how the start of the season is going.  Bobahunter, how was the volunteer turnout? 

[bobahunter]

The start of the year has been good. I got paired with another coach and we have 2 or 3 parents that have helped at various practices. So we're off to a way better start than I was part of last year. We ended up getting all 3rd graders so it will be a bit trying on the pitching front but we'll be ok. A lot of the kids on the team played basketball together (which I got to help coach too) over the winter so there are some good friendships and coaches know what to mostly expect. The best part was that when we started doing batting cages on sunday afternoons back in February the new high school coach was there helping kids and parents. 

We still have a good number of kids that haven't played before or at least very little. So a lot of the coaching right now is focusing on those kids to get them caught up while still trying to challenge the ones who have been in it a few years. 

[Samurai Bucky]

It sounds like you are in a great situation.  Having extensive parent involvement along with help from the high school coach is huge!

[RobDeer 45]

Yes getting any sort of involvement from the high school coach and kids is so huge.  We are lucky enough to have that with our baseball coach and his players.  We've had no involvement from the basketball coach and I bet you can guess which program does way better.  Well the high school coach got fired this year so I'm hoping for a little change on the youth basketball front.

 

Glad to hear things are going well!

[stoutdude04]

On 5/1/2023 at 3:46 PM, bobahunter said:

The start of the year has been good. I got paired with another coach and we have 2 or 3 parents that have helped at various practices. So we're off to a way better start than I was part of last year. We ended up getting all 3rd graders so it will be a bit trying on the pitching front but we'll be ok. A lot of the kids on the team played basketball together (which I got to help coach too) over the winter so there are some good friendships and coaches know what to mostly expect. The best part was that when we started doing batting cages on sunday afternoons back in February the new high school coach was there helping kids and parents. 

We still have a good number of kids that haven't played before or at least very little. So a lot of the coaching right now is focusing on those kids to get them caught up while still trying to challenge the ones who have been in it a few years. 

Since you are fortunate to have parent volunteers you could look into small group work(you may be doing this already).  Take your 12 kids and split them into groups of 3 or 4 and work on the different skills.  T-work, fielding grounders, fly balls, etc.

My buddy has a son who is in 4th grade and he said their practices are each kid sit on the bench and then come and take a few cuts.  Then they go into the field and do field work.  I told him kids at that age need more reps to get better AND make it more enjoyable.  No surprise his kid hates playing baseball.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

21 hours ago, stoutdude04 said:

Since you are fortunate to have parent volunteers you could look into small group work(you may be doing this already).  Take your 12 kids and split them into groups of 3 or 4 and work on the different skills.  T-work, fielding grounders, fly balls, etc.

My buddy has a son who is in 4th grade and he said their practices are each kid sit on the bench and then come and take a few cuts.  Then they go into the field and do field work.  I told him kids at that age need more reps to get better AND make it more enjoyable.  No surprise his kid hates playing baseball.

I've coached all different levels of your baseball for nine years, and you are 100% correct. Station work is the name of the game at that age level. Those kids need reps, and they don't get that with a glorified scrimmage every practice. We run two practices a week before we start our league season, and I always try to split them up into one practice that focuses on throwing and fielding work, and one that focuses exclusively on hitting. That way the practices don't become too repetitive. 

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

On 2/22/2023 at 4:23 PM, PlayerHader said:

TheHittingVault.com is a great resource. Lots of drills and other resources. I used it when I coached high school softball. There are a ton of free videos and resources out there, but the problem is a lot of different drills and way of teaching things contradict each other. TheHittingVault isn’t free, but it’s comprehensive and consistent. It’s definitely not for everybody.

 

 

My son moves up to 10U this year, and I will be coaching my daughter’s 8U team. After 10 years of coaching high school varsity, I’m both very excited and a little apprehensive to work with these young gals!

How's it going so far? Having experience coaching girls softball at that age level a few years back (my oldest daughter is at 12U now), you really have to be those girls' biggest cheerleader. Celebrate every positive thing they do. I found coaching boys at that age is much different than coaching girls. Boys are typically a little further along athletically, but also extremely scatterbrained at that age. It can be next to impossible to get them to focus. The girls are usually further behind on fundamentals, but tend to pay attention and listen better. The girls also aim to please a bit more at that level. They are definitely apprehensive and usually pretty shy about making an aggressive play, or even aggressive movements out on the diamond, though. So when they do show proactive tendencies, really reward that behavior. Play it up like when just got a game-winning hit.  

[bobahunter]

we certainly do the station work like infield , outfield, batting, pitching. When we do big group stuff there are always kids that sit down, make dirt mounds, put their gloves on their heads (yikes). I feel scared for some of these kids when we are fielding batted balls because they just aren't paying attention. Just last night we had 2 get nailed in the shin and one in the arm. Scatterbrained is certainly the word for it. We have our first game coming up in a week we've had to focus on how the game works. I would say 60% of the kids know enough to get through a game but the other 40 we have to go through everything, how to lead off, how cutoffs work, how to run bases properly, etc. So we inevitably have to do large group work to run through scenarios. I think once they've played a few games we can focus mostly on the station drills.

[bobahunter]

We had our first game the other night to mixed results (not the score more on how they played). We have 7:30 start times at this level and we still have about 2 weeks of school left. For my kid, we have a pretty strict in bed by 8pm rule and my wife found out from sitting in the stands that most of the other kids do too. So it will be a rough couple games until the school year ends with kids not really used to being active past 8. In the first inning we ripped off a couple hits and runs with the top of our order but that was about all they could muster for the game. I feel like this is going to be what happens for most of the year. We have about 7 that are consistent, 4 that are wild cards, and 4 who are developmental. Any suggestions on lineup construction with a group like this? For this first game we loaded the top with the 7 to get out of the gate quick and after that we had short innings with a bunch of strikeouts from the less consistent players. And with 15 kids batting (everyone bats) we didn't get back to the top of the order again until the 4th. Would you mix in some of the less consistent at the top to try extend more innings or just keep it as is with the top 7? 

[stoutdude04]

17 minutes ago, bobahunter said:

We had our first game the other night to mixed results (not the score more on how they played). We have 7:30 start times at this level and we still have about 2 weeks of school left. For my kid, we have a pretty strict in bed by 8pm rule and my wife found out from sitting in the stands that most of the other kids do too. So it will be a rough couple games until the school year ends with kids not really used to being active past 8. In the first inning we ripped off a couple hits and runs with the top of our order but that was about all they could muster for the game. I feel like this is going to be what happens for most of the year. We have about 7 that are consistent, 4 that are wild cards, and 4 who are developmental. Any suggestions on lineup construction with a group like this? For this first game we loaded the top with the 7 to get out of the gate quick and after that we had short innings with a bunch of strikeouts from the less consistent players. And with 15 kids batting (everyone bats) we didn't get back to the top of the order again until the 4th. Would you mix in some of the less consistent at the top to try extend more innings or just keep it as is with the top 7? 

My buddy coaches about the same age level and he kind of mixes and matches.

[RobDeer 45]

Wow, 15 kids, that's tough.  It's kind of a battle between mixing it up and wanting your best players to get the most at bats.  But again, I always have to remind myself that this is about having fun.  I try to put a new kid at leadoff each game, especially early in the year (we only have 12 on a team).  I then try to go 4 or 5 stronger hitters in a row followed by a lesser hitter, and then a few more strong hitters.  Again, hoping to string some hits together but also move kids in the batting order.  I also will flip the lineup after a few games to get all the lesser hitters up at the top, again to make sure they are having fun.

 

Last night I had a middle of the road kid ask if I could put him closer to the top sometime, I smiled and said, "you're hitting leadoff tonight, is that high enough?"  It just so happened that was where I had him for the game!  His eyes lit up and then said "that's too high!"  I said "you got this!"  He proceeded to start the game off with a line drive single!  He was so pumped.

[nate82]

When I was younger we only had 8 players on our little league team every year.  Someone either got hurt or quit.  Somehow we were able to place 3rd one year with only 8 people on the team.

Not sure how you could manage with 15.  That is hard to keep everyone’s attention throughout the whole game when 6 are sitting on the bench at times.

[bobahunter]

Yeah, 15 is a lot and too much normally. But we have 2 city teams at this age level and wouldn't have enough to have a 3rd. I like the idea of switching it up since I already see that it's going to be a tough task to keep some of these kids interested. I had one kid as me the other night "is this what baseball is? all this sitting around?" I had to tell him that it's nothing like practice where there is always something happening and everyone is involved. Unfortunately, I feel like a couple of these kids are there to give their parents a free babysitter for 6 hours a week. They don't watch baseball, don't know even the most basic rules, and clearly don't want to be there. But I also have to remember that this is a developmental league that is open to anyone that wants to play. So, like you said, we have to try and make it as fun as possible. 

[bobahunter]

25 minutes ago, nate82 said:

Not sure how you could manage with 15.  That is hard to keep everyone’s attention throughout the whole game when 6 are sitting on the bench at times.

This was hard having all those on the bench at one time. I tried to keep them all focused on the game and cheering for their teammates, but it always quickly regressed into silly noises, talking, and trying to play with the bats and balls. And when they noticed the bird's nest in the corner of our dugout it was over. [facepalm]

[PlayerHader]

On 5/4/2023 at 11:01 AM, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

How's it going so far? Having experience coaching girls softball at that age level a few years back (my oldest daughter is at 12U now), you really have to be those girls' biggest cheerleader. Celebrate every positive thing they do. I found coaching boys at that age is much different than coaching girls. Boys are typically a little further along athletically, but also extremely scatterbrained at that age. It can be next to impossible to get them to focus. The girls are usually further behind on fundamentals, but tend to pay attention and listen better. The girls also aim to please a bit more at that level. They are definitely apprehensive and usually pretty shy about making an aggressive play, or even aggressive movements out on the diamond, though. So when they do show proactive tendencies, really reward that behavior. Play it up like when just got a game-winning hit.  

Yes, you pretty  much nailed it, especially the difference in demeanor and behavior between the groups. It’s been a fun and busy spring. Have a foster son playing 8u baseball too, now. Busy as heck, but I love being at the ball fields.

[PlayerHader]

10 hours ago, bobahunter said:

We had our first game the other night to mixed results (not the score more on how they played). We have 7:30 start times at this level and we still have about 2 weeks of school left. For my kid, we have a pretty strict in bed by 8pm rule and my wife found out from sitting in the stands that most of the other kids do too. So it will be a rough couple games until the school year ends with kids not really used to being active past 8. In the first inning we ripped off a couple hits and runs with the top of our order but that was about all they could muster for the game. I feel like this is going to be what happens for most of the year. We have about 7 that are consistent, 4 that are wild cards, and 4 who are developmental. Any suggestions on lineup construction with a group like this? For this first game we loaded the top with the 7 to get out of the gate quick and after that we had short innings with a bunch of strikeouts from the less consistent players. And with 15 kids batting (everyone bats) we didn't get back to the top of the order again until the 4th. Would you mix in some of the less consistent at the top to try extend more innings or just keep it as is with the top 7? 

Boy’s 10u baseball team played a DH Saturday and both games were 0-0. I won’t try to contribute up lineup ideas. 😂 

[yourout]

Really push kids to be aggressive with the bat.

I would rather kids occasionally chase and learn how to swing then get walks only to struggle when they advance to the level were the pitchers can throw strikes consistently.

It's easier to reign them in later then it is to get them to hit after being able to stand and watch.

I always had the last guy to dugout after the last out do 5 pushups and if it was an infielder it was 10.

[bobahunter]

Second game last night and we faced a "fast" pitcher (a fourth grader and our team is all 3rd graders). The kids were watching him warm up and some were a bit negative about not being able to hit off him. We had to calm everyone down and tell them to be confident and take their swings. I think maybe 2 or three kids even hit the ball and we had two hits the whole game. There were so many kids who really didn't even swing the bat which was frustrating. We tell them to be aggressive all the time but when it comes to the game a lot of them are hesitant to swing. With the ones that did swing, the problem was because of the fast pitcher they wanted to be further off the plate. And instead of taking that initial step towards the mound they were opening up and stepping out to third. I'm sure with more reps they will get more confident and they will start to take more swings.

On a plus note, we kept the game pretty close and outside of one bad inning we held them to only 1 run. My son also pitched for the first time. He wasn't nervous at all but I certainly was. He came on in the second inning and struck out three and walked one. I have been really surprised by his accuracy and that he doesn't seem to get bothered by much. He told me after he was done with the inning, "I kinda like pitching, that was fun." That was an awesome feeling.