The amount of time players spend in practice dwarfs their game time. While a player’s most exiting memories of softball may come from games, her overall perception of the sport probably comes from the hours of practice time she devotes. It is therefore crucial that practices combine fun and productivity. Otherwise, that player will find some other sport to play next season.
I’ll admit, putting play into practice can be hard to do. My rec teams practice two or three times a week and I always go into games wishing we had more practice time. A softball player has to know how to throw like a quarterback, run like a sprinter, catch like a wide receiver, and hit like a..uh…softball player (sorry – ran out of analogies!). The point is that there is too much to teach and not enough time to coach it. Yet, the benefits for including fun-time in practice make for a better team in the long run than practice, practice, practice all the time.
One gain gotten from including fun activities in softball practice has already been touched upon – that if the player has fun at least some of the time, she is much more likely to sign up for softball next season. Keeping girls coming back to the sport should be a top priority for a coach at any level. The immediate benefit for the team is that fun activities can be excellent for team-building. Some teams have chemistry and some teams do not, and it can be hard to put a finger on what “team chemistry” actually is, but I think team chemistry is a function of how much each teammate cares for the other. Consequently, team-building activities, while fun, end up being productive without the players (or the coach) even realizing it.
I usually schedule a fun activity as the last practice event of the week. Though I try new activities often, one fun game has become a staple to our routine: Over-the-Line. My girls love playing this game, actually begging to play it on days we do not schedule “fun”. It should definitely be on a coach’s short list of stuff to do.
Over-the-Line is a Whiffle ball hitting game and we usually set up the field in the outfield grass. Put down home plate, and then about thirty feet down each base line, put a bucket (or something to mark the base). Divide the girls into two teams and play three or so innings. The batting team's goal is to hit a Whiffle ball fair and over the imaginary line connecting the two bases. Balls that go over the line without getting caught are base hits. The girls do not run the bases, so ghost runners are used. The first hit puts a ghost runner on first, the second single advances the ghost runner to third (the other bucket) and puts a runner on first, and then each base hit after that scores a run. Players only get one pitch, soft-tossed from the side by their coach, so if the ball goes foul or does not cross the line on the fly, it is an out. Once three outs are recorded, the teams switch sides and the other team bats. Oh, and the fielder has to call the ball before she catches it and fielders use only their bare hands. A simple game, but it gets the competitive juices flowing, makes them perform in a pressure situation (bases loaded, two outs!!), and inevitably there is a bunch of good-natured griping about the calls on fair/foul balls and balls that land just over the line, and bad soft-toss pitches.
There are other things that we do, such as play Softball-Football and use Slip & Slides on a hot day, plus we usually follow the last practice of the week with pizza and sodas or ice cream, but Over-the-Line is the single best fun activity that I have found for getting girls to laugh and smile on the softball field. It teaches hitting the ball hard when the pressure is on, calling the ball before you catch it, and unites the players in their grumbling about how coach pitches to them (hint: as long as each team complains equally, you’re doing a good job). The end result: Fun and team building!
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