Are You Drilling or Having Fun

I've been coaching kids a long time and have learned that the best way to teach kids is to make practice fun. The trick to making practice fun is to be sure they don't know that they are practicing, which means the kids think they are just playing games when really they are learning valuable skills. This is most true for elementary school age kids, where the attention span is very short. Some examples of fun drills include:

Soccer Skills - Sharks and Minnows
Softball Skills - Outfield to Home relay
Basketball Skills - Any game to deal with shooting
Baseball Skills - Around the horn drill

Most sports drills can be setup as some sort of competition or team relay. Another way is to challenge the kids by giving them an incentive to make the coaches do push ups. For example, for my 10U fast pitch softball team, we do the around the horn drill. As an incentive, I ask them how many throws they can make without dropping the ball. The first time I do the drill I will get a number between 10 and 15 throws. If they are able to not drop the ball in the allotted number of throws I will do 20 push ups. If they can't, they have to do 20 push ups. The number at the next practice gets adjusted up or down depending on the outcome. The goal is that the coaches and players end up doing the same amount of push ups by the end of the season.

When you make practice fun, everyone wants to come and the kids will tend to listen to you more.

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