Softball Drills – Water Balloons and Calling the Ball

After years of coaching softball, I often find it is the simple softball drills that work the best.   Try these two drills to hone your teams skills.

A good drill for teaching how to swing through the ball is to soft toss water balloons.

I found that even after several batting practices using the machine, a lot of my girls would swing half way to eliminate the sting. This carried over into our game play. I introduced the balloons and we started smashing the ball in the following tournament.   I now do it at least once a week. Usually as the end of the practice, and especially the day before the tournament.

I have also found one of the simplest things my players do is calling for the ball.   Shouting “mine” when fielding prevents:
A) no-one going for the ball — because they all thought someone else was going for it.
B) kids banging into each other.

Splitting teams into 2 and putting half on 1st and half on 3rd base and getting them to run in when I throw the ball up and out and calling out as to who is going for it and the other player backing up.   Simple but effective!