- Sep 11, 2014
- 18
- 0
My twelve year old daughter is a beast on the field. She plays third base and catcher and rarely lets anything get by her. When she steps up to the plate, however, it's like a whole different player. She is very nervous and it shows. She looks very timid and I know this excites whatever pitcher she is up against. It's very obvious that she lacks confidence there. I started taking her to a hitting coach in an effort to help build her confidence. When doing tee work, soft toss, and hitting off of the machine, she does great. Her coach says that fundamentally, her mechanics are great and that her problem is strictly mental. When she's facing a live pitcher, it's as if she just loses her mind and does nothing that she's been practicing. She stands far off of the plate and steps out so far that if she does make contact, it's off the end of her bat. When questioned, she either says that she doesn't know why she's doing it, or that she's scared that she's going to get hit by the pitch. I'm not sure why that suddenly frightens her though because she's taken many hits and it's never bothered her before. Her coach has thrown balls at her and taught her how to properly take a hit, and has tried putting things behind her so that she doesn't step out, but she consistently just steps over them. She even steps back when she's just taking a bad pitch...as if it's a habit. At her last hitting lesson, her coach told her that she cannot help her anymore...that her problem is mental and that she is the only one who can change that. My daughter has become very frustrated as she doesn't know how to change it. Any advice or tools that you can recommend that would help her to overcome this? She is getting very discouraged.