High School Tryouts a Month Away

With tryouts coming up in about a month and skill training severely restricted, what are teams doing to get ready? Is there much focus on conditioning? How do you motivate potential players to get as much done as possible before tryouts?

Most teams probably play within a week or two of tryouts opening. Doesn't seem like a lot of time based on the skill level of some I see.

 

Some play BB

Some are playing BB. Will be in good physical shape and will likely be doing some SB work on the side. The others are, like my DD and some of my friends have already started working out with TB teams. Will be ready by mid FEB for MS/HS tryouts and the spring 2012 TB season to start.

 

If it wasn't for TB I hate to think what the softball skill level would be. The HS rules make it practically impossible to teach even fundamental skills.

Those rules work good for football I guess but they sure handicap other sports where skills require more time to learn and practice.

 

SF are you allowed to do anything this time of year on smaller groups, such 8 people, or is that limited to conditioning type workouts only?

 

You can practice skills with 1 less than a full team. You can't during other sports tryouts, exam weeks. It must be open to everyone and required of none. And, of course, cold weather puts a hamper on practices. Inside facilities are in high demand by in season sports and other activities.

One issue is when a dozen or so show up; what do you do with the rest? Some schools have only the 8 show up that they want but by the rules that could be a violation.

 

when we have more than 8 show up, we split the group and 1/2 condition and weight train while the other 1/2 work on skill sets.

 

Thats illegal

You cannot split the team into two groups to do work skill and or weights or speed..
Open field would be an option.
You can weight train or work speed all day long with all the players but if you work skills,,,,,,, those are the eight for the day.

 

Pre Season Conditioning

We divide our kids into 4 teams of 4 and we have Winter Olympics every year.
For six weeks we train in the weight room, run shuttles, run distance, do plyo metrics, and core exercises. Your team is essentially your group for each workout station. The last three weeks before the season start the competition begins. Every day there will be eight events each group will designate which member of their group participates in each event. Example: day 1 Bench press, 60 yard shuttle, Box hops, pull ups. So one person from each group will participate in each event. So they have to use strategy in what event gives them the best chance to win. Each event gets points 10 - 1st, 6 - 2nd, 4 - 3rd and 1 - 4th. We track the point totals each day and post them in the weight room on a board. Winner at the end gets an iron star for their letter jacket and their names on a plaque that stays in the weight room.

 

Do you do any softball skills training?

 

Nope. Nothing softball specific. They do things that will improve their swing and throwing without actually doing it. We do however do 8 man workouts the first half of the year. September and October. We try to reinforce flaws then. We give every kid a video clip of them swinging and throwing and things to work on. They get a list of drills that they can do at home and I ask them to submit a video to me with them doing it once every two weeks. I then provide them with feed back. If they have any questions they come see me individually and I explain or demonstrate what I need for them to do. It's pretty easy now that cell phones have video. I give every kid foam balls and an old bat that need them.
I don't have State Championship talent but we find our way to be pretty competitive every year.