philbob, We had a drill where we had a bucket of balls that included all sorts of different balls.........baseballs, softballs(11",12" and 14"), weighted balls (just a couple), golf wiffle balls, tennis balls, ping pong balls, dimple balls, etc. (I just raided my garage for anything I could find). I had her pitch a bucket of 30 balls or so from the rubber and put a water bottle on a bucket at home plate just to make it fun. Obviously some of the balls may not reach the target (ping pong balls for example), we just wanted those balls in a straight line towards home plate and on a good plane. The effect was immediate and often hilarious, I am sure you can imagine what happens when you throw a golf wiffle ball after you throw a weighted ball. Sometimes I would have her throw the same ball twice to see if she could make the correction. We did this every practice (or close to it), I believe this helped her gain muscle memory very quickly because she had to focus on her mechanics to throw these different balls correctly. We had started with a pitching coach in the fall of 2007 but weren't able to practice much once the weather got too cold, we built an indoor cage in January and within a month I thought she was ready to tryout for a team. I really believe this drill helped speed up the process. She tried out for two teams (10u) and made them both, the team we chose already had an established pitcher, who she split time with. We had some bumps along the road, but all in all she pitched very well for a 1st yr pitcher, including a nice win at NSA nationals to help us finish in the top half of the tournament. But looking back, I think this drill helped her muscle memory quite a bit. Once they have consistent mechanics and they start seeing the results, it will naturally help their confidence, which hopefully helps them relax a little and just throw. Good Luck
