Making Our Practices Efficient & Fun

I believe the practices we've held so far this season haven't been very beneficial to the team. A big part of this has been the difficulty we've had getting a decent practice site. Bouncing from place to place and starting late on weed covered fields with gopher holes doesn't allow for much more than some throwing and hitting. Earlier this week, we finally got to practice on a good diamond, Nichol Park #1, but we didn't make optimal use of it. We sort of went through the motions before breaking into our intersquad game. Our play that afternoon made it evident we have a lot of rough edges in need of some polish. We didn't cover bases, we didn't back each other up, we didn't throw to the cutoff man, etc. We were sloppy! So what can we do about it? I have some ideas for structuring and streamlining our next practice to focus on basic skills and repetition. This is dependent on everyone getting to the park on time so we're on the same page. If some of us come straggling in late, we'll have to stop and explain things multiple times and it will throw us off schedule. We need to avoid the dead time. Anyway, the practice will go something like this: 5:00: Stretch & jog. 5:10: Warm-up tosses. 5:20: Break into two groups - infield & outfield. Both groups work on their drills simultaneously*. 5:45: Regroup to perform pop fly drill**. 6:00: Walk-thru to clarify positioning & strategy***. 6:15: Full defensive drill to reinforce walk-thru. 6:45: Quick BP session. 7:15: Done. Sure, it's easy to just show up, throw the ball around and swing the bat for awhile. But if that's all we do for practice, that's what we'll do in our games. We'll play sloppy like we did this week. If we develop our skills and prepare ourselves for the conditions we will encounter in a game, we will exectute better and minimize our mistakes. We all know from experience that it's easier to perform a task that we have performed numerous times in the past. That's what we need to devote ourselves to at practice. I am confident this sort of structure will improve our skills while remaining fun. *The infielders will work on a rapid fire drill that involves picking up grounders, covering bases, and short tosses. The outfielders will shag flies and work on a charge & throw drill. **The pop fly drill is similar to a quarterback throwing a lob pass to a wide receiver in football. It improves your ability to judge the course of a fly ball while also developing your ability to locate a fly ball on the run. ***We shouldn't be spectators on the field. When the ball is in play, we should be moving to field the ball, backing up a teammate who will field the ball, or covering a base. The walk-thru will detail these responsibilities.