Photo Credit - Steven Duerson
Well we are five games into winter this season's indoor Winter League at Champions Sports. The Champions house team has been surprisingly very competitive with some strong pitching and of course some timely hitting. I am so please that this year we have 12 players on the house team and they truly want to get better each and every week. In seasons past we have always had teams that had players that didn't seem to care about getting better. Anyone that knows coaching and it doesn't matter what sport, it is much more fun to coach players that want to get better than players that just want play. The house team is currently 4-1 and in first place by a couple of game with only 3 more regular season games to go. Hopefully we can continue to improve and send this boys off to their spring teams in mid season form.
When coaching a group of 9 and 10 year olds can be like herding cats sometimes. However, for most part these young guys do listen and make adjustments. This Champions Winter League has always been designed to give players game speed reps in the middle of the winter. Practice is important, batting practice is important. However there is nothing that will replace what you can learn in a live game situations. I am so excited for this teams practice this Thursday night and our next game is on Saturday at 2pm.
Our practice the Thursday will be on defending the rundown. This past weekend we had a baserunner dead to rights and we muffed up the rundown and allowed the runner to advance. So with that being the only thing we didn't do right that is what we will focus on. So Champions house team on Thursday night at 7:30 we are gonna work on defending the runner in the pickle, hot box or whatever you called it when you were a kid. I think we called it playing pickle. I know I have heard it called hot box. Basically the RunDown!
Sorry its been so long since I have published. Just been pretty busy with getting summer schedules posted and winter programming scheduled for Champions. I will try to write more often. Not that anybody is reading this anyway. Talk to you soon!
Coach Bale
