Here is a quick video on how to put catcher’s year on a your players. Note the direction of the clips and how the clips are on inside of hook. Feel free to watch the rest to figure out how the rest of the gear gets secured and sized for the kid.

Here are some youth baseball leagues in Atlanta. While Grant Park Baseball can’t personally endorse any of these leagues here are one’s that we’ve heard of from other parents.

Near Southeast Atlanta:

• Atlanta Parks & Rec – iParcs Baseball
• Buckhead Baseball
• Decatur Baseball
• Druid Hills Youth Sports
• East Atlanta Baseball
• Gresham Park Baseball & Softball Association
• YMCA of Metro Atlanta Baseball & Softball

Game days can be a little hectic at first, but you can make it easier by having a bit of a plan to manage youth baseball games:

1. Pre-game routine – Make sure your kids put their things in the right dugout when they arrive, and establish some sort of pre-game routine to warm them up. They could throw in pairs and take some ground balls. Whatever structure and consistency you choose will start game day off right.
2. Prepare the lineup in advance – Download a copy of this template (or try some more advanced versions at the bottom of this post), but create a lineup to start the game that meets the requirements to give kids equal playing time on the bench and balance between infield and outfield positions. Put your more evolved and aware players at pitcher, catcher and 1B—that’s okay.
3. Identify game day roles – Decide who will coach first and third base when you bat. Assign a dugout coach to ensure kids bat in order and reach the right positions. Provide a scorekeeper for the flip chart if you’re the home team. Designate a coach to keep the on-deck batter in the circle away from spectators. Play some roles yourself or delegate to an assistant coach or parent.
4. Get catcher ready between innings – Prepare your next inning’s catcher while they’re not batting or on base. Get them in their gear early. This minimizes downtime between innings.
5. Coaching is observing – Your kids hear many voices during the game. They struggle to focus on what matters. Keep instructions minimal in the moment. Less is more. These two videos show how to handle coaching effectively.

This is soccer, but same applies… while you will address some things in games, addressing others in the next practice might be better.

If you’ve gotten these down you can also look at this video for some more advanced coaching approaches as you manage youth baseball games like designating someone to be the one voice for hitting, pitching and fielding:

Every coach will have their own approach to running baseball practice and it will evolve the more practices you run. If you are just getting started here are some things to consider:

1. Make a plan – kids will respond to consistency and a little bit of structure. Try to coordinate with your assistant coaches before practice to make sure there is some semblance of a plan and each coach knows how they can help. Here is a template you can download to outline a given practice and share with coaches in advance of practice.
2. Warm-up – Try to incorporate some sort of warm-up or stretches particularly for kids throwing arms, to get things started.
3. Keep Your Players Busy – Throwing BP to one player while the rest watch doesn’t keep kids engaged and doesn’t maximize your time to make them better. Break up into stations when you can and have assistant coaches help so each kid is getting more reps and work.
4. Make it Fun – Create competitions around drills. You can find examples here in the post on Mojo Curriculum from MLB.
5. Positive reinforcement – give kids at all skills levels an equal balance of constructive coaching with positive reinforcement. The goal is to make every kid better regardless of skill level.

Here is a good video that goes through many of these concepts of running an effective baseball practice….

This article that includes baseball and t-ball drills for beginners that new coaches can use.

Each coach has their own style and way to go about practice. You can search youtube for lots of specific baseball and t-ball drills for beginners. If you are just starting out coaching or maybe you are looking for ways to make practice more fun, the Mojo Curriculum featured on MLB is a good one stop shop to get started. Many of the same videos are on YouTube.

Here are some examples…

Rookie/TBall

Alligator traps teaches fundamentals of fielding. Basepath Blitz gets them started baserunning. And up top, down low teaches them how to catch the ball.

Minor (and even Major)

4 corners get kids to throw it around the horn in a competitive game. Throwing seeds help with throws from the outfield either to a cut off person or all the way to the plate. Soft toss slugging to work on baseball mechanics.

These are good for minor too (even though it says 9 or 10). Classic pickle drill for base running. Knock it off competition helps work on accuracy.

And…. baserunners try to beat fielders in around the horn. Or Gold Glove is the all around fielding practice where you can discussion situational baseball.