Friday night is practice night for our baseball team; I don’t really run a tight ship. I mean, it’s not so structured, so strict, that kids hate to come. I believe they LIKE to practice; that’s really the goal here. Getting the kids to WANT to come to practice, and oh yeah, to get better too. As they say, practice makes perfect…
We know that nobody is perfect, but certainly practicing makes you better, and for the first “drill” of the day, I DO expect the kids to be perfect… before moving on; I’m not really asking for a whole lot. The kids line up across the infield, 2-3 deep at each position. I hit grounders. They need to field it cleanly and throw it over to first base cleanly. Each of them needs to do it, before we move on. Some days it goes smoothly, others, not so much. This is followed by turning double plays, then by throwing to a specific base; we usually end the infield session with throwing home. Afterwards, we take to the outfield, where I hit, OK, TRY to hit them fly balls; I’m not so bad. They will throw it to 2nd base after catching it; sometimes we’ll setup a cutoff man and go to third base… we’ve went home too. After all the fielding practice, it’s time for the hitting. I pitch to each of them; they get a number of hits each before running. Usually in the 2nd half of the season, which is where we are now, we’ll scrimmage. I pick the teams, sometimes the kids do, and they go at it; it’s fun. Getting the kids more “game experience” is really key I believe. Explaining certain scenarios as they come up throughout the scrimmage is a good way to learn. Practice IS fun.
I’ve only been preaching this to my son his whole life. You want to get better at something? Practice. I have some pretty good backup with this concept, you know, the way Michael Jordan took practice seriously. It’s important. Surely it’s more important than say Allen Iverson had lead some youth to believe; we’re talking about practice? Yes, we are. Sure, it’s fun to play the games; everybody likes that. But practicing… it’s just as important; it gets you ready for the games. But I get it; I didn’t always like practicing as a kid either. As I got older, I wanted to practice less and less; I guess that’s why I didn’t make it… haha… one of many reasons I’m sure. You don’t want to burn the kids out, but working on your craft, whatever it is, will make you better… maybe not Michael Jordan better, but better than you were before practicing; I’ve seen that pretty much 100% of the time with these kids.
As we prepare for our final regular season game, and then the playoffs that everybody makes, I look at the team, and ask myself, have we gotten better? I say yes. It’s not always evident, but overall, the kids are better; the team has come a long way from that 11-2 blowout in the first game of the season. In each of the 10 games since then, we’ve had a chance to win; that’s called progress. Practice is a main reason why.
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