- Oct 26, 2019
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- 113
Exactly. Confidence in fielding comes from knowing that you can move your feet to play yourself into a better hop and not have to take it off your face.
✔We are big on teaching her mental game. This is helpful and we will try.
Some may say field tennis balls but I like to do something a little fun and get a bag of big marshmallows not the bitty ones but the ones that are about 2 in round and viciouslyI'm also looking for drills or something that will improve confidence and reduce fear. Hubby says take her out and just start hammering them to her. Sink or swim I'm sure it would work but looking for a more "humane" way. She's an awesome fielder during drills at practice.
We are big on teaching her mental game. This is helpful and we will try. I'm also looking for drills or something that will improve confidence and reduce fear. Hubby says take her out and just start hammering them to her. Sink or swim I'm sure it would work but looking for a more "humane" way. She's an awesome fielder during drills at practice.
Sad fact she ALWAYS wears it except in outfield. She doesn't need it in the outfield. This was the one time she didn't bother to put it on when they transitioned from outfield drills to infield and it cost her. She's great at drills in practice or when hitting infield. It's happening in games. 99% mental block
A pitching machine can be a huge help here. When my daughter was younger and would shy away from ground balls, we took a lot off the pitching machine, and I would slowly turn it up as she got more comfortable. I also told her if one came out too fast that she could forehand it or backhand it giving her permission actually made her more confident. Some other things we did were take ground balls off the machine while sitting on a bucket, so there was nowhere for her to really run to.There's a bit of logic here, but not "hammering" them. Start slow and progress. It'll take a while to build up her confidence. If this was me, I'd schedule time to do grounders. 15 minutes per day. Start with rolling them to her for first 2-3 days, then light hits for 2-3 days, then medium, finally hard. Two weeks of daily grounders and I'd bet she'll be back to normal.
Thing is, in these cases, most parents don't want to put in that time.
Would she have turned her head if she WAS wearing a mask? It's an understandable reaction to turn away (masked or unmasked) , but depending on the hop it took, a facemask isn't made to protect the throat, so she still could have taken a hit.DD wasn't wearing her face mask in the infield. She turned away on a grounder and got nailed in the throat.
If you're looking for her to take up soccer in the spring, sure.Hubby says take her out and just start hammering them to her.
Thing is, in these cases, most parents don't want to put in that time.
Funny story. I had a girl recently on my youngest DDs 10U rec team who was afraid of ground balls. I told her jokingly that the cow used to make her glove gave his life for no reason because she wasn’t using it. After getting over the initial shock of realizing that her glove did indeed come from a cow, she has fielded much better. She has since named her glove Betsy (she said that was the cows name) and she doesn’t shy away from groundballs anymore. If teaching them to read and pick hops doesn’t work one could always try the dead cow guilt tactic.In my experience if you hit a young kid a hard ground ball to their forehand side they will more often be ok (not that they will always catch it but they won’t freeze up) Ask yourself why that is and the answer will be what needs to be nailed down in order to handle all hard hit balls (@Towny9 already mentioned it in this thread)