Practice Management

do you have any auxillary areas near (like a s****r field not being used)... I have a practice football field near my baseball field and we get a lot of use on it with defensive drills

(good grief, a European football field)

First, is this a single team or two teams (JV and varsity)?

Without cages, I think that will make it difficult to get in your swings, but I think there are some things you can do. If you have or can find some old netting, you can set up a large net "screen" for lack of a better term. What we have done is just build a frame to support the net, then the net we used was an old cage net that wasn't usable for that purpose any more. This may or may not work in your current situation if you don't have netting. If you can make a screen, you can use this for tee work and soft toss.

Another thing we did was use an old piece of wind screen from the fence to make a solid screen to hit into. We use this for hitting golf balls with a wood bat (note- you have to really keep an eye on the kids for playing home run derby). You could also stock up on regular size wiffle balls, golf ball size wiffle balls, and tennis balls to hit. I've also heard of folks hitting beans, bottle caps, or even a product called hitting disks.

Maybe set up a routine that all the kids go through building up from some of the hitting drills off the field that I've mentioned above, moving on to the on deck circle for on field BP (note here that they should be going through their game on deck preparation mentally) then advancing to on field BP.

Once a guy hits, they are getting live reads on the bases. If you have guys who struggle with baserunning, have them spend more rotations on the bases getting live reads. Also, assuming you have the courtesy runner for catchers, maybe let your catchers run the bases more in practice. Only do this if you haven't really been hard on your catchers during practice because you don't want to destroy their legs. This may or may not really help the catchers, but if they advance to the college level they won't get courtesy runners and maybe it'll help prepare them to run for themselves.

Also, during BP, have your infielders and outfielders in their normal positions getting live reads off the bat. Maybe give them a specific situation they're working on. For example, runner at 1st, less than two outs. Now your infield knows they're rolling two, OF has to read the base hit and decide if they are going to 3rd to keep runners at 1st and 2nd or if the runner at 1st is easy in to 3rd and they have to keep the DP in order by going to 2nd. Have your shaggers deep down the lines and in the gaps so they are out of the way for your live fielders (have the bucket in foul territory down the lines to help your CF get live reads). If balls are clean extra bases to the gap or down the lines or over the outfielders head, let them go and get the next live read. You can have an assistant hitting fungoes to IF when they aren't involved in a live play.

Depending on how much time you have, you could also use this time to get your bullpen work in. Send a pitcher and catcher to the bullpen with whatever their plan for the day is going to be. Obviously when they pitched last and when they are supposed to pitch next will dictate what work they're doing. You can also have a hitter in the bullpen with the pitchers just tracking pitches (also helps give the pitcher a more realistic bullpen with a batter). My personal opinion is during bullpens your catchers are working on everything as if it's live too, so they're blocking and scrambling to recover balls in the dirt. Also, have them work on their footwork for throws to 2B and 3B in the bullpen.

So, now you've got one on deck hitter, one live hitter, seven live fielders, say 3-4 guys in your off field hitting stations, maybe 2-3 guys in the bullpen, and the rest shagging, so I don't think many are standing around doing nothing. Everybody has something to do, and other than shaggers everyone has specific goals they are working on. I'm sure you'll get other better ideas, but this is a start.

Also, one thing to note....if you or someone on your staff can't throw a solid BP, do front toss. Don't waste time throwing one hittable pitch every four throws.

Do you have any assistant coaches?

Sounds like a tough situation.

A couple of questions real quick

1- Do you have any open space at all on campus near your field? Reason I ask is if it's big enough and nobody's using it then turn it into a practice infield. Lay down some temporary bags and put paint down like an infield would be. Be a quick non-permanent solution so you can get some GB in while the outfield hits plus it will save wear and tear on your big field. If you can get permission then cut out the grass to make it more realistic but being on all grass won't hurt.

2- Can you do a quick fundraiser to put up a cage? I think for the long term success of your program if you could get one (or two, three) would do wonders in practice organization.

3- Do you have any type of popup nets or extra L screens? If you do then you can set some drills up to the side and have the guys cycle through them before getting onto the field to hit.

If all of those are no there is still a chance. What we do at the school I'm at now is we do about 45 minutes to an hour of defensive drills. After that we give the guys about 5 - 8 minutes to set the field up for BP and get the screens set up. We leave the cage cover over homeplate during the whole practice to help save time.

We cycle through starting with seniors and then work down to freshmen. Each round we do something different like 2 bunts, 2 hit and runs, 2 hit behinds, 2 sac flys and then take like 5 - 7 cuts. We don't do all those at once but some sort of combonation. We have one hitter in the cage, one on deck and one in the hole so we don't have to wait for someone to run in from deep left field, get a helmet, find their bat, put on gloves and a few dry cuts to get loose.

While all this is going on we have screens set up at 2B and 1B and we have coaches hitting fungos to IF working on double plays and routine groundballs to 1B. Just make sure to time the hits with the pitcher during BP so a kid doesn't have two balls hit at once. Tell the kids if something happens and two balls are coming to try and bail out of the way. Preach focus on the hitter and glance at the coach. We have two or three guys that when they hit the coaches don't hit fungos because they can mash so we don't take the chance.

When a kid finishes his round then he busts his butt up the line to 1B to work on baserunning. We have them deeper in the IF dirt to stay out of the IF doing groundball work. When a kid finishes hitting and is going to baserunning we get the next hitter in as quickly as possible and in short centerfield the guy on the bucket comes in to be in the hole. So in order to hit to have to be in the field getting fungos (this does include our OF as well), go to the bucket, be in the hole, be on deck, hit, baserunning and then back into the field (they can get some water before they head back out).

To make this work you have to put the responsibility on the kids to do their job and know which job to go to next. Once you do that the kids start looking out for each other to make sure someone is keeping up with their job. But if that happens and someone isn't on bucket, on deack, in the hole or ready to hit we stop everything and do our conditioning to end practice.

You have to be consistent in your routine and be demanding in what you are trying to accomplish.

Hope this helps

BP Set Up A
1. BP
2. T work/soft toss by dug out into nets
3. Bunt groups down right field line
4. Shag group

BP Set Up B
1. BP
2. Baserunning
3. Shag Group
4. T work/soft toss by dug out into nets.

The other thing you can do is split them up, half OF and half Infield. You can then have assistant coach fungoing during bating practice.

if you want a copy of our master practice schedules email me at coachd_04@yahoo.com
this is just something we do.