But in the end, you want to know you did everything you could to be successful. If you’re going to fail, fail doing your best. In my last post, I talked about the need for players to take personal responsibility when it comes to playing time. The idea is to control things you can control, like your […]

Coaches need to make sure each player knows their position and responsibilities during situational play. Coaches need to make sure each player knows their position and responsibilities during situational play.  Coaching a team on any level is far from easy. There are countless hours spent off the field thinking about and working on your craft. […]

If you are a hitter, the more you understand where you need to make contact with the ball the more likely you will be to adopt a hips-shoulders-bat sequence. When I work with fastpitch softball hitters, one of the things I will drill into them (incessantly, if you listen to some) is the sequence “hips-shoulders-bat.” […]

As many teams do, Peters said his team also comes up with baserunning games as well to help the girls further develop that underrated aspect of the game. They often can be tiresome and repetitive, which is why an underrated component for coaches is to keep practices interesting and fun to not only make athletes […]

A gifted athlete – one loaded with lots of fast-twitch muscles and/or exceptional hand-eye coordination, for example – can be successful with no training or even poor training. If there’s one thing I think nearly everyone in the softball world can agree on these days it’s that softball private instruction isn’t cheap. Especially in areas […]

The fact is our eyes (and brains) have an amazing ability to adjust to our surroundings, and to take in and process information while we are on the move. If they didn’t our species would have died off a long time ago. When you spend as much time as I do around batting cages, one […]

I don’t let them use a glove to field with at the first practice. They learn the catch ground balls barehanded using two hands. One of the most important things you have to do as a coach is teach the fundamentals. That’s even more of a priority when your team is comprised solely of players […]

The more effort and enthusiasm you show, the better your chance of tipping the scales in your favor. For most of the fastpitch players in the country, the end of February means one thing – high school team tryouts. Whether you consider high school ball the pinnacle of your year or merely something to do […]

One other thing you may need to do is have the pitcher throw into a screen or net rather than to a catcher. The reason is psychological. One of the most common problems I see when trying to teach fastpitch pitchers to learn to whip the arm through the release zone is overcoming the urge […]

The margin between winning and losing can often be measured by flexibility in the clutch. When the game is on the line, it’s essential to lock in with a calm, mental approach. Michael Thompson believes this is the key to infield defense in the latter innings of a contest. As the head coach at West […]