Little League Key: Coaching Your Pitcher in a Game
Pitching can be the most exciting and rewarding experience on the diamond or the loneliest and most isolating. And it can swing between those two extremes in a single inning. The early little league experience is particularly difficult, when the players are not regularly able to pitch strikes, sometimes not even able to regularly throw the 46 feet from mound to plate. As a coach you will experience the full range of emotion as you watch your players become pitchers, and a key aspect of your role is how you interact with your pitcher on and off the mound.
Little League Key: the Draft
Team selection via live draft can be daunting for new or prospective coaches in little league baseball. There will always be debate as to how exactly to run a draft, or whether to use a draft at all for team selection. But with the right attitude, preparation, and commitment a live draft can be a fantastic way to build your team, get to know your fellow coaches, and recruit your assistant coaching staff (parents of dedicated players often make great assistant coaches).
This Little League Key focuses on the live draft process at the little league rec level.
Little League Key: Pitching
Pitching is a pivotal position at all levels of baseball, maybe most of all at that first little league kid-pitch level. At the rec level, you’ll be lucky to have 6 kids who can throw strikes reliably, and every batter will face high likelihood of getting hit by a pitch! This Little League Key is dedicated to the coaching aspects of pitching at this youth level.
Little League Key: Building a Game Lineup
If you are coaching a rec league little league team, especially in the 8-9 year old range, one of your weekly tasks, maybe a couple times per week, is setting the game time lineup.
Without a doubt this aspect of coaching baseball is one of my favorites. For game play I would argue it is the one of the most important jobs you have as a coach, up there with setting a good example of how to interact positively with the umps, the other players and coaches.