Coaching and Youth Sports

holy cow kid pitch at 8 seems a little aggressive. It was already a festival of walks with older kids

 

your sweet spot is gonna be one big dent more than likely if your kids can swing it. Balls will start coming off weird.

 

it's awful to watch. walk, walk, strikeout, walk, strikeout, hit is how the innings work. i thought that was standard for little league. i had no idea people did the machine that old.

 

as i said we aren't using hard balls so they are still compressed. i think it will be ok. i know a couple of kids who used them the whole season without problems. if it get screwed up i'll just ditch it. i'm only planning on him using it till he gets used to the speed. his twin brother already isn't using it but he's a much better hitter.

 

Hell, ours eat hard balls. We use jugs machines at about 45. We are issued 3 balls each night for two games on that machine. They are pretty bad by the end if the 2nd game.

 

We start kid pitch at 9. Our best leagues are 7-8 on the machine, Imo. Kids can hit, kids can field, and the machine throws them hittable balls.

11-12 would be good but travel teams pull so many kids that we've had to play 9-12 together the past couple of years, which is where I will be this spring. Looking forward to 9yo hitting 12yo pit hing and vice versa.

 

oh we are using one of these:

 

it would definitely make for a more entertaining game. it's awful baseball to watch. the kids also learn to not swing even though the strike zone is huge and the coaches are supposed to tell them to swing at anything near the plate.

 

Yeah, different machine:

 

Yeah that’s a lot faster and more accurate

 

oh man isn't that a little dangerous? I know some 12 year olds that can sling it.

 

So do I. I kno some that can hit liners back to the mound and down the 3rd baseline pretty hard, too.

 

We split our league 9/10 and 11/12, but we are debating maybe going 10-12 and 9-11, because frankly there are some terrible 11 year olds.

 

We just don't have enough 11-12s to support a league, so they combined them. My nephew (11) played fall ball in it, and it seemed to work. Now it's my 9yo's turn, so we will see.

It is what it is. I'm doing what most parents with a kid who can play a little do--looking for some good path to get him into school ball, and then we will see.

 

IMO our league doesn't do that enough. You do occasionally have some good players play down just because the coaches don't know who they are (usually they came from another league) and they don't get drafted into the proper division, but they are reluctant to move kids up more than one league year and in some cases a kid is so good it's crazy they are in the lower division. usually they don't move kids down unless the parents request it.

 

Man I dont miss all the jockeying. Son currently playing lacrosse is in the developmental program. Hes having the best time out of every sport hes played.

 

Man if my little league team plays our first game this Sunday like we practiced today we are going to destroy people. Knock on wood.

 

Any of you guys want to coach u8 girls soccer?

League coaches meeting last night. Because of a shortage of coaches, we have 12 or 13 on every team. It's going to be a long season, I think.

 

No thanks. I'll settle for my role of assistant coach in girls tee ball this year, only because my daughter is making me do it.

 

We have our first practice tonight, in a parking lot, only because I want to know how much potential pitching I have.