Coach's Corner

Here's an outstanding baserunning drill that my assistant coach brought to me.

Runners start at home plate. Take a swing, round first properly taking a wide, aggressive, turn and dive back into the first base bag. Runner gets up quickly, takes an aggressive lead, and takes off to steal 2nd sliding into the bag. Next, the runner gets up, takes an aggressive secondary lead and dives back into the bag. He then steals third repeating the slide, getting up and taking an aggressive lead off third. Be sure that the third base lead is in foul ground, and that the dive back into the bag is coming back on the foul line in line of the catcher’s throw. Finally, the runner is to get up and sprint home (no slide at plate). The next runner takes off from home when the previous runner completes his dive into first and touches the bag.

The focus of this drill is to make our runners very aggressive and not be afraid to get dirty! It also gets players practice in sliding and diving properly, which will hopefully keep us from injuries and out of court. It also tends to develop players who want to work hard and get dirty.

Submitted by: Barry Traynor