Middle School Poll

Our teams practice Monday thru Saturday in season. Off season (November thru February) they hold "open gym" twice a week for all players (7th thru 12th grade) Best of luck.

Although it is not sponsored by the school I would think you should practice and play as though it was. I would practice everyday just like any other school sport.

Tell everyone up front. If they want to play they will go by your schedule. If see you later.

Good Luck

My son played as a 7th grader on his Middle School team last year. They practiced pretty much every day during the season. Usually, only day without a practice was obviously a game day.

I'm glad I'm not crazy! Last year was the first year for this type of program. In season, they practiced once a week!!! I just can't understand how they thought that was enough. It's not rec league anymore.

Couple of ideas:

Ramp up the practice early.... every day, 6 days a week to get them started once the "practice" season starts and then back off to 3-4 days a week outside of games once you start playing games.

I would also get the local HS coach involved and have him give you some practice plan ideas and also see if you can use their fields when they are done or not there. You will get some consistency by getting the HS coach to help out and it will also get the serious kids to get involved in the program if they know they will get some visibility at the HS level. HS coach should be interested to get kids working within his approach and will allow him to get an early look at some kids.

Good Luck!

When my son was in middle school they practiced or played every weekday. Make sure your practices fit into the late bus schedule. On game days the parents will have to find a way for the kids to get home from school after games.

Work out a relationship with the high school coaches. At our middle school the high school varsity coach ran three or four of the practices each year. Yes, he was looking to see which upcoming players had tools. Three of the players got to attend a couple of varsity workouts.

While there's no middle school ball in our area, you would think they would practice the same way the high schools typically do. When my son played, during tryouts/scrimmage season, they practiced and scrimmmaged 6 days a week then once the season starts, it's games or practice 6 days a week

Assuming that this is going to be the first/second year on the Big field I would not throw more than 2 days in a row. If you practice 5 days a week and throw every day you are going to have a lot of tired and sore arms.

First two weeks I would probably practice Mon/Wed/Thur then let them have three days off to rest their arms. After you get a couple of weeks to stretch the arms then you can start bull pens going and do some real in and outs. The one thing we like to do is shorten up the infield by going from the mound instead of the plate until the last go around and have buckets in the outfield so the outfielders aren’t throwing too much.

Also as others have said now is a good time to get with the HS coach and start using his terminology, in/out routines, signs and some of his individual routines. I would suspect though with you starting this team the HS coach is already involved.

You can use the first two weeks to get in a lot of cage work along with batting stations. The kids will be jazzed about that anyway. After you throw a lot make sure you run quite a few poles and kids ice their arms when they get home. I would also tell them to start drinking a big glass of chocolate milk after practice.

In 7th and 8th grade ball, the kids practiced after school, 5 days a week. Only on game days did they not practice. They didn't do weekends, when most of the kids are playing club.

The JR high coaches and club coaches work together on pitching to make sure no arms were hurt. For my club team, I simply let the JR high coach do his thing and I managed my tournaments based on what was left.

I would've shut down during JR high season, but my kids came from three different cities. One played an earlier JR high season (Jan - March), another played later (Feb-April) and the third doesn't play JR high. So we didn't do much in Feb and March but played in Jan and April.

I formed a club team so my kids could play and make thier school teams. To me this was the main reason we played.