In the world of youth sports, there’s a secret weapon that transforms awkward beginners into confident athletes: repetition. I have the pleasure of coaching my niece’s middle school softball team this season. This is the ‘B Team’, composed mostly of girls who have never played softball before. I’ve assisted as the school’s varsity coach led practices with the combined A and B Teams. This has helped me realize that the key, especially for beginners, to improvement in sports, is repetition—doing the skill or technique correctly over and over. Executing the drill correctly multiple times in practice so it comes naturally in the game.
Coaching as Teaching
I’ve written before about how one of the most important roles a youth recreational sports coach plays (and my favorite!) is that of teacher. Coaches should explain the skill or technique, demonstrate it to the players, and then drill them on the execution. This is where repetition comes in. Not just doing the skill many times – performing the skill CORRECTLY. When the coach sees that the player doesn’t get it yet or is not quite doing the skill correctly, they need to intervene. Explain what the player is doing wrong, show them the correct way to do the skill, and give them multiple opportunities to try it again.
An Example – Running Through 1st Base
For example, I noticed that many of the girls on the team were not running the bases correctly. In previous practices, we had told the girls that they should run through first base as first and home are the only bases you can run through. However, we hadn’t taught them how to do it. At a recent practice, we took the time to teach them about running through first base. It looked like this:
- We told them that first base was a base they are allowed to run through.
- We explained that running through the base allowed them to get there faster than if they had to stop right on the base and that getting to first as fast as possible put pressure on the defense and often results in the batter being safe. Getting runners on base is how we score runs.
- We showed them what we meant by running through the base. That’s right, the coach had to run (or at least jog)!
- We gave them the opportunity to try what we were teaching them. We lined the girls up at home plate and had them run through first base.
- We corrected them when they didn’t do it exactly right. When one of the girls pulled up and slowed down before she got to first base, we told her – while emphasizing the direction to the rest of the team – that she shouldn’t slow down until after she steps on first base.
- We had them repeat the drill several times.
This demonstrates the methodology to get your players to perform the skill or technique correctly: tell them what to do, explain why you do it that way, show them how to do it, have them try, correct them when they don’t do it correctly, and then have the repeat the skill correctly multiple times. It might take some time and effort to get to where the players are executing correctly. When they have it down once, the key is to have them do it many times so it becomes second nature. Repetition.
Hustle & Attitude 