- Jul 14, 2018
- 982
- 93
Now that it’s tryout season, one of the main pieces of advice you see over and over is to look for a team that emphasizes ‘development.’ But what are we talking about when we say ‘development’?
At the 8U-12U level I think it mostly means working on fundamentals and getting plenty of reps and playing time. But at the older levels, where fundies are pretty well set, what is the next level of development?
Is it more team-emphasis, working together on making plays? Is it simply finding the best competition? Playing in the right events to reach your goals? Competing for playing time?
I ask because I’m an AC on DD’s 16U team. We took on a kid at the beginning of the year who was athletic but lacked softball skills. We thought we could train her up, but there’s only so much you can do during team practice. We gave her things to work on outside of team activities, but she just never came along and finally quit last week.
I feel like we let her down, and dropped the ball on development. But at 16U, does development mean fine tuning a swing or correcting a bad throwing pattern or should we be focusing on other things?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
At the 8U-12U level I think it mostly means working on fundamentals and getting plenty of reps and playing time. But at the older levels, where fundies are pretty well set, what is the next level of development?
Is it more team-emphasis, working together on making plays? Is it simply finding the best competition? Playing in the right events to reach your goals? Competing for playing time?
I ask because I’m an AC on DD’s 16U team. We took on a kid at the beginning of the year who was athletic but lacked softball skills. We thought we could train her up, but there’s only so much you can do during team practice. We gave her things to work on outside of team activities, but she just never came along and finally quit last week.
I feel like we let her down, and dropped the ball on development. But at 16U, does development mean fine tuning a swing or correcting a bad throwing pattern or should we be focusing on other things?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk