Our favorite end of practice drill is to have girls sprint to 1st and run through the base, turn and jog to 2nd, then once hitting second, sprint to 3rd, round the base and then sprint and step on home. The trick is three-fold however.
End of Practice 3 Fold Baserunning Drill
We have a girl about ten feet away from 1st with her hand up. The sprinter must high five the girl’s hand before she can stop running – encouraging her to run through the bag, not to the bag.
Then we have a coach stand a short distance away from 3rd, in foul territory, with a nerf bat outstretched. Wait, what? This is to encourage the girls to make the banana curve early enough so that when a girl hits the bag she is running straight to home and not ten feet out of the base line.
It’s always a coach because we know to move the bat just enough to avoid serious contact with a girl who overruns 3rd, but still lightly reminding her that she turned too late.
Finally we have a home monitor. Her job is to watch home base. She is to keep track of how many times home base is missed.
At the end, tally up:
1. the amount of times girls failed to high five the girl at first while still in a sprint,
2. the number of girls tapped by the nerf bat, and
3. the amount of times home was overshot.
Add these up and that is the number of poles or laps the team has to run. If the number is really high, it translates to the amount of push-ups or sit-ups the whole team must do.
Maybe this can help someone try something fresh, just make sure no one is hurt by the outstretched nerf bat!