How to Organize Youth Baseball Practice As a Coach

Coaching youth baseball can be challenging and overwhelming, especially for a first-time coach. A well-organized practice can make the experience more fun for the kids, parents and coaches alike. Practices that are too slow or involve a lot of standing around and lecturing will bore most children and may even lead to them choosing a faster-paced sport, such as football or basketball.

Things You'll Need

  • Assistant coaches or volunteer parents
  • Several buckets of baseballs
  • Batting tee
  • Fungo bat
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Instructions

    • 1

      Write up a plan for what you want to accomplish during a practice session, whether it is to work on a particular baseball skill or practice a specific situation that will come up in a game. This is especially important when coaching very young players, because they have shorter attention spans and will lose interest quickly if the practice does not stay on task.

    • 2

      Ask the parents of your players if they are interested in volunteering as assistant coaches during practice. Many parents stay and watch practice anyway, so they may be willing to help run a drill or simply keep an eye on the kids to make sure everyone is in the right place. This is even more important when coaching very young children, because you will need several adults to supervise them and keep the practice on track.

    • 3

      Split your players into several groups and have each group go to a different station to practice a specific skill. The number of stations you can run depends on how many assistant coaches you have and the age of your players.

    • 4

      Set up a batting-tee station so players can practice a specific pitch location. Place a batting tee several feet in front of a fence or batting-cage netting. The coach should sit next to the tee with a bucket of balls so the player does not have to stop and set up another ball to be hit. Have the player line up the tee in his batting stance so that it is always in the desired location. For example, one batting tee-session may focus on pitches that are high and outside, while another would focus on low, inside pitches.

    • 5

      Have another assistant coach throw live batting practice to the players, either on the field or inside a batting cage. Using a batting cage cuts down on the time spent shagging flies and returning baseballs to the pitcher's bucket, making the practice move more quickly.

    • 6

      Move another group of players out to an open area of the field with an assistant coach. Have the coach hit balls to the players with a fungo bat to practice fielding grounders and pop-ups.