Here are some of my favorite softball practice drills that I save for the end of practice. These drills break up the routine, provide a lot of conditioning and review of fundamentals while being fun at the same time!
Around the Horn
one of my favorite drills at the end of practice is what we call around the horn, I get my infield in their positions and have the rest of the team as runners, we start at home plate and go around the horn, the infielders have to get the ball around twice before the runner gets around once, and the 2nd baseman and SS switch after the ball gets around once, its a good drill for the infielders to learn to set up and make good throws and it also gets some conditioning in, after a couple of rounds I let the infielders switch to runners and get some of the younger less experienced kids get some infield.
No Gloves Drill
uncles played softball with a 16 inch softball and no gloves! I’m having my team scrimmage with this ball and no gloves!
The reason is two fold, A) the kids will learn to use two hands to make plays. B) The ball is big and soft and a hard swing is needed to compress and make the ball go. There is some resistance to the ball which will build faster bat speed and good hard swings. Once you can make this ball fly then a softball will go a long way!
Soft Toss Scrimmage
We play a soft-toss scrimmage game.
Each batter takes a couple swings, thenshe hits one and runs it out. It allows our fielders to attack solidly hit balls in play, and our batters get some good fundamental hitting training as well as base-running against players who know what to do with the ball.
In just 20-30 minutes our kids see lots of action.