Dear Coach,

I am a middle school baseball coach in North Carolina. Early in the season our weather is misserable and often cannot practice outdoors. Being the lowest ranking ball program spacing indoors is rarely available to us. Are there any drills you can recomend for indoor practices that take place in small areas?

Thanks,

Don Samson

Dear Don

I understand exactly what you’re having to go through. Let’s assume by your question that you do have a small space to work with. Then what we need to do is get plastic balls, rag balls, foam balls so that we can do the normal hitting drills from the tee, soft toss, front toss, short overhand batting practice in that confined space.  We can do fielding drills from a short short area, we can do through throwing drills with the rag balls and a short area.  I can tell you very much so that I know what I’m talking about I actually had to hold practice in a classroom during the early part of the season when the gym was being taken over by the basketball teams and I was trying to get baseball started in Colorado with all the bad weather we have in the spring.  And I used almost every normal drill that you would ever use indoors or out but the type of ball makes a huge difference.  I will go so far as to tell you that I took a pair of sweat socks and roll them up real tight and tape them over to create a ball that could be hit or thrown in that classroom and not do damage.

So my answer is get a bunch of balls that you can do the drills with that will tear things up and go to work just like you would normally.  If you can get a net or some piece of tarp you might use that also and use real balls but real balls always hold the chance of damage.

Let me know how you get along get after it you’ll be all right what your kids need to do is learn the proper technique/positioning and they will learn it if you will give them a chance.

This is where real coaching comes in where you have to be innovative and work.  Make sure you approach your kids that this is the way you’re going your going to better.  Try to preach to them that this is a unique situation and were going to be better for it.

Let me know how to all works out.

Coach Arnald Swift