also work on making practice as efficient as possible......I'm a big fan of a written practice plan, either posted to the dugout wall before practice and or "in the players hands" before practice (team website, social media, etc) - that forces you to stick to a schedule as much as possible, it lets the players know ahead of time what they'll be doing, minimizes down time/wait time, etc......i've been known to go all the way down to picking who throws with who during warmups; I'd have a lot of WHYS on there as well - ie "we will be doing this drill to help improve our communication" - letting them in on the WHYS also increases ownership/engagement, which you are going to need with only one set of coach eyes
I don't know why this never occurred to me before. I always have a written plan, and I usually give a brief preview of what we'll do at the very beginning, but I never considered actually sending the plan to players.
I like this, though I wonder if some of the players would be more likely to find an excuse to not come to practice on days when they didn't like what was planned. Maybe I should put "free ice cream" on every day's plan just to get them to show up.