Grasshoppers: March 2008

Practice for tonight has been cancelled due to the wet fields. Try to be at the park around 7:30am Saturday morning for opening day ceremonies. Parking will be hard to come by. We will meet on the big field where we practice.Our game will be at 9:30. We need 3 volunteers to work the big blow up slide from 8:30 till 9:30.

Don't forget Douglas County night at the Braves game April 3rd. I need to get a head count of how many tickets each family will need. The kids will love it, they get to line up and walk around the field that the pros play on.

Don't forget Snacks Krissy :)

Oh also I have the banner, and I am going to try and pick up balloons (green & orange of course) for the kids.

Lets hope we don't get rained out tomorrow.

Throwing - Feet and shoulders parallel to the target, point with the glove, throw. Keep it simple. Have them yell their partner's name before throwing. This helps them learn each other's names and reduces the number of bean-balls during warm ups.

Catching grounders - Alligator mouth, meaning use both hands. I tell the kids there's an eyeball in the palm of their glove, and they can't catch the ball unless their glove can "see" it (I got this from David Wright and it seems to work really well). I do a lot of drills where I have the kids get in the ready position then shuffle back and forth. Get them moving their feet. Most kids this age want to leeeean and stretch to get the ball instead of getting in front of it, or they want to park themselves in front of it and sit or kneel down. Discourage this.

Run the bases - This ranges from learning the names of the bases, to knowing how to run them in the correct order, to being able to watch the base coaches and follow their instruction. Baby steps. Also, teach them the "ready position" on the bases. One foot on the bag, one foot towards the next base, hands on the knees, eyes on the batter. Be prepared to remind them of this frequently. When my kids are running the bases in practice, I put a fast kid in line first, let him get about halfway to the next base, then tell the next kid to try to catch him, and so forth. The slower kids get a longer head start. This way all the kids are running as fast as they can trying to catch the kid in front of them. This is the best way I've found to get them to hustle around the bases. They also need to understand there's no passing allowed. Better they learn this in practice.

Also, it's not too early to teach them to run out ground balls. I had a little girl last year who got so used to getting thrown out at first, she would actually stop and wait for them to throw her out, like she thought that's what was supposed to happen. She literally didn't know she was supposed to try to beat the throw because I never thought to tell her. You can't assume they know anything at that age. Luckily I caught this early and she ended up becoming one of my better base runners.

Hitting - Foot position, hands up and back, swing hard. That's all you should worry about with 4 year olds. You'll have to work with some of them to keep them from throwing the bat. Try not to pressure them too much to hit the ball. Some kids have a hard time hitting it off the tee, so they slow the swing way down and just tap the ball. Discourage this. Strikes don't count in t-ball, so let them swing away.

Above all, have fun, be patient, and Good luck!