Practice And More Practice

**GUEST BLOGGER**

 ~ Eric Hendrickson ~

T-Ball (Phoebe) and Softball (Sarah) practices started the last week of March.  We practice two evenings a week.  I am coaching again this year with Coach DJ.

Sarah's Practices

Our softball team returned 8 players from last year's team.  We ended the season last year with 10 straight wins and I believe we will be better this year.

Sarah is one of the three 9 year olds on our team this year.  The youngest girls are 7.  Sarah does a great job of throwing and catching the ball.  She is pretty good at the plate too.

We practice at a baseball complex, which is only about mile from our house.  Coach DJ (green), Coach Matt (red), and I are coaching our (12) girls.

We teach the girls fundamentals like throwing, catching, fielding, and hitting.  We also work on dugout exercises like eating peanuts, sunflower seeds, and cool handshakes.  Above, Sarah and Lexy are perfecting their cool handshake.

Since Sarah can catch the ball well, we play her a lot at first base.  I sometimes do baserunning so we can teach situational defense.

Ready position.  I find myself saying this a lot.

We had a rainout so we were able to get permission to have practice at an indoor facility just a few miles from our house.

Sarah - Practice Scrimmage - May 2nd, 2016
After many weeks of practice, we scrimmaged another machine-pitch softball team. 

DJ is setting up the machine and I am catching the pitched ball.  We get the machine fine tuned so that it is throwing strikes.

Sarah played good defense and went 1 out of 2 at the plate.

We won the three inning scrimmage 4-2.

Phoebe's Practices

I didn't know if Phoebe wanted to go out for T-ball again this year, but she became real excited about it a few weeks before the season began and wanted me to be her coach.  Although the league is both boys and girls, we have a team of all girls.  Each girl specifically asked the league to be on our team.

Phoebe has improved from last year.  She is swinging with more power and more confidence.

It was raining outside, but we got to practice inside at an indoor facility one evening.

We played a game with the girls called "Keep Your Backyard Clean".  We split the girls into (2) teams.  We drew a line in the dirt and put about a dozen wiffle balls on either side of the line.  We gave the girls 1 minute to continually throw the balls into the other teams backyard.  At the end of 1 minute the team with the most balls in their backyard was the loser.  This game was intended to teach the girls to be more aggressive at going after the ball.

The Boys...

Silas, for the most part, has done a good job sitting through our 2.5 hours of practices.  Below he is playing with DJ's boy, Dane.  Silas is just about 1 year older than Dane.  They seem to play together well.