Are Kids Working on FUNDAMENTALS of the game enough???

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I attended a tryout for a good friend yesterday to evaluate pitchers for him. There were about 25-30 14u girls at this tryout. I was very very surprised how bad overall fundamentals were on these kids.

Are girls taking enough of a break from a long summer of games to make their body stronger and just work fundamentals or is everybody to concerned with tryouts, finding that right fit (which is important) and then playing fall ball, fall tournaments, winter ball......

I worked the college coaches hospitality tent the entire weekend at the Stingrays tournaments and I had several conversations with coaches about this and a couple other things that are debated on OFC. Many college coaches said that they feel travel teams play way to many games and don't focus on individual fundamentals as much as are needed to play with success at the college level.

I feel that if kids worked more on fundamentals and training their body more and played less games that the overall level of play would be better, especially at the younger ages.

This is just some food for thought and I would love to hear from some of the more experienced coaches out there or even some college coaches (JoeA) and get their thoughts.

 

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Good question. Shouldn't fundamentals be in place by the time the girls hit 14u? If you aren't developing girls at 10u and 12u then you are delivering a great injustice to them.

 

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Fundamentals should never end and should be a part of every routine warm up or practice.....no matter what age.

 

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Fundamentals should never end and should be a part of every routine warm up or practice.....no matter what age.

I was going to say that they will need tweaking or a reminding of certain fundamentals, but personally if you don't have the fundamentals in place by the time you hit 14u, you are way behind in my opinion.

You should not have to TEACH fundamentals at 14u, if you do, I don't want my dd playing on your team.

 

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Fundamentals never go out of style. Following tryouts, we intentionally have our dd shut down for at least 3-4 weeks. Following that, she does focus on fundamentals and conditioning. We found a great personal trainer just a few minutes away. She has developed a program specifically tailored to our dd, addressing her weaknesses and reinforcing her strengths.

 

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Agree strongly with Hilliarddad that fundamentals should be a part of every practice. There are many talented players out there who have good fundamentals in one phase of the game, and not so good in other phases. While most of the girls should have "heard" most of the fundamentals at one point or another, I've yet to coach a player who was great at all of them. I do think there are many teams out there ... both travel and school teams where fundamentals are sorely lacking.

 

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We never stop. There's a big difference between teaching fundamentals to a solid team and having a project player or two that needs a bunch of one on one.

Not teaching fundamentals would be like saying go ahead and stop working off the tee...just one example in my book.

What fundamentals aren't being taught?? Please explain. Not doubting...maybe you saw a bunch of girls that just didn't have good instruction and they all showed up that day. Lol.

 

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I'm all for drilling fundamentals.. I don't believe the basics should have to be taught at 14u.

 

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We never stop. There's a big difference between teaching fundamentals to a solid team and having a project player or two that needs a bunch of one on one.

Not teaching fundamentals would be like saying go ahead and stop working off the tee...just one example in my book.

What fundamentals aren't being taught?? Please explain. Not doubting...maybe you saw a bunch of girls that just didn't have good instruction and they all showed up that day. Lol.

Not saying they are not being taught, just not being taking as a priority and not being practiced near as much as should be. and you could be right about all these girls that came to the tryout.....lol

 

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I honestly don't know. I haven't seen anything under a 16-U game for quite awhile and never see a 10-U, 12-U or 14-U practice. Based on what I see at 16s and 18s, I think some fundamentals are pretty good and some are terrible. Throwing overall is poor, hitting is much better than it used to be, fielding is better. I don't claim to know enough about pitching mechanics to have any opinion on that. When I see girls around here make throws and then I see West Coast or top college conferences, it's like night and day. Our girls in the Midwest are SLOW to get rid of the ball and most throw from only one arm slot. It's almost as if many girls are afraid to try some things and maybe imitate top softball or baseball players in practice.

I guess overall I'm fine with where girls are mechanically these days. While fundamentals are critical, I would like to see girls be a little less robotic and use some creativity on the field. We used to practice turning all kinds of double plays in baseball. We would practice throwing on the run from down near the ground, the side and about three-quarters. We would do behind the back catches of fly balls (not for game purposes!), basket catches, diving catches, just all kinds of things that one might see on SportsCenter nowadays. I believe all of that stuff makes one a much better defensive player, able to pull certain plays out of a hat when it's necessary and just generally making players better with glove work and quick hands.

 

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I agree JoeA10101 but we did not have Facebook, cell phones, smart phones, computers, laptops, playstation, Wii, Xbox or the Internet. We got outside and Played SPORTS with our friends and neighbors for fun or play time. That was called going outside to play. Kids start to lose this meaning nowadays around 8 to 10 years old.

 

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I have also heard that same comment from college coaches - too many games and not enough individual work on fundamentals. Fundamentals are sort of a catch-22. The more an athlete works at them, the better they get - and the better they get, the more they work on fundamentals! The thing is, exceptional athletes DO NOT have to be told that they must work on rudimentary skills. During a given calendar year, a serious college bound pitcher should put in nearly a 1:1 ratio of game hours to individual practice hours, counting off-season work. Do other position players do that? I'm sure some do, but sadly there are a lot of kids playing today that expect to get better by just playing games - pitchers included. Ain't gonna happen folks.

I think it also depends on a combination of team focus and player goals. Obviously a kid who's goal is to play at the college level is going to have to put in mega time on individual fundamentals, or they can kiss college ball goodbye. If at 14u a kid is struggling to make a team that will evolve to a 16u showcase team, that would be a big clue that either basic athletic skill is lacking, or disciplined work at fundamentals has been ignored.

 

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Sammy ... only 1:1?? Is that a typo? The really successful players I know put in a ratio of at least 5:1 of practice hours to game hours ... maybe closer to 1:1 when "in-season" but a whole bunch of practice hours when not ...

 

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My dd just finished her senior year in high school. She spent over 400 hours in practice and lessons last year. She spent about 75 hours in the circle. This is about a 1 to 5 ratio. I suspect that most serious pitchers are closer to 1 in 10 because she pitched every inning of every game in high school and 2/3rds of the summer ball innings. (A lot of circle time this year)

If the hitters and fielders would even spend half of the time that these pitchers spend they would significantly improve their skill sets.

 

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No one knows how to play first base. The answer for those who play first base is: ZERO.

 

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My dd just finished her senior year in high school. She spent over 400 hours in practice and lessons last year. She spent about 75 hours in the circle. This is about a 1 to 5 ratio. I suspect that most serious pitchers are closer to 1 in 10 because she pitched every inning of every game in high school and 2/3rds of the summer ball innings. (A lot of circle time this year)

If the hitters and fielders would even spend half of the time that these pitchers spend they would significantly improve their skill sets.

Are you sure?? 400 hours is roughly equivalent to 7.7 hours a week EVERY week non-stop for an entire year. Remember, I'm only talking about pitching work in a calendar year - not conditioning, hitting, fielding fundamentals etc. Consider that DD's typical pitching workout consisted of about 15-20 minutes warmup (doesn't count as hours in a session) followed by about a 1.5 hour session which included throwing at least 100 pitches. She limited this to twice a week during season (March into first part of August) then about 8 weeks off (NO throwing - just conditioning), then back to 5 months of about 6 - 8 hours weekly.

So I admit my original estimate was a bit off - it was more like about 300 hours ACTUAL pitching work in a calendar year (5.7 hours avg./week). She pitched about 95% of the HS games, and maybe about 5 - 7 games on tournament weekends. So with that math exercise I'm actually getting more like about a 1:3 ratio, or 100 circle hours to 300 practice hours for actual pitching time. Now, add in conditioning, hitting, fielding, and an occasional movie, and you've got a pretty full plate.

 

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I feel this is a real issue. Many kids have X amount of time to devote so softball and if all that time is spent on the standard team practice and games then they don't get enough individual work. If you play on the weekend and practice Y times a week then whatever is left can be used for individual practice. How much of that will you use? Depends on the player, parents, etc.

I found that my daughter needs a bunch of individual work or she regresses. She's not a natural and needs the work to keep improving. The team she was on did a great job with the amount of practices and the instruction given but the more we practiced away from "team" the more burned out she got. So we backed off and her game suffered.

We are now finding out for her to improve as an individual she has to back off the team she was on to get the individual work. We will see if this works in the coming year.

All this boils down to the individual. I think that if most have time away from practice they use it hitting and not on anything else. Do you have one session to spend on hitting and another to spend on fielding? That's either one long evening or two separate ones. Are you as a player/family going to do that? Chances are you are not. Maybe some will, most won't. A tournament, 1 team practice on the week, 2 other days working on her individual game = 5 days/evenings. That's not what she wants and is why she won't play on the top layer. And I'm ok with that.

 

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I agree JoeA10101 but we did not have Facebook, cell phones, smart phones, computers, laptops, playstation, Wii, Xbox or the Internet. We got outside and Played SPORTS with our friends and neighbors for fun or play time. That was called going outside to play. Kids start to lose this meaning nowadays around 8 to 10 years old.

Agreed. And we didn't do the things our parents did and they didn't do the things their parents did, etc. Each generation gets more distracted, etc. in the eyes of the ones before it. This used to be a slow process but accelerated with things like cable tv, video games, etc.

 

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I have a first year 18u team. I wonder what the difference between "basics" and "fundamentals" really are. Is it simply the difference between practicing "reps" and player specific "improvement" work? Are these "fundamentals" individual skill development - or game situation drills?

 

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Based on the skill set of the kids I saw at 14U tryouts: No, kids are definitely not working on the fundamentals enough. Maybe this is an off year, or a majority of the strong talent was not shopping, but I saw too many pitchers throwing 45, too many fielders making errant throws when they did stop the ball, and too many choppy swings. I'm not sure if there isn't enough average coaching at the rec ball level, or if there were just some quickly were some very, very shaky fundamentals this year.