From the sidelines
So it might sound lame, but I did some searching on the Internet before my first T-ball practice May 5 at the Marion Baseball/Softball Complex.
I didn't think much about it when I agreed to do it, until one day it hit me: What the heck am I supposed to do during practice?
I've coached 12-year-olds before, but their practices are much more structured, and they all knew where first base was.
To my T-ball kids' credit, we didn't have bases during the practice.
So we drew big circles with our feet where the bases are supposed to be, until my wife Jamie found some "bases" that were actually floor mats with foot prints on them.
But back to the Internet.
I read some columns other T-ball coaches had written, message board posts from others, and even saw T-ball coaching for dummies books.
One thing I learned is that you can never have too much help from parents or assistant coaches.
A 2-1 child-to-coach ratio was suggested, and with the help of some parents and other coaches we were pretty much there.
We started practice by throwing in the outfield, and everyone, even the new players, did pretty well.
Then it was on to everyone's favorite: batting.
I understand at the older ages why batting is more fun, but T-ballers make fielding look pretty fun as well.
Once the batter makes contact, if it goes past the pitcher's mound, the infield generally turns into one big pile of small bodies.
The parents are yelling "Throw it to first," and the kids have either a huge grin on their face, or a priceless, wide-eyed look.
We never did have a perfect play where a player fielded a ball and threw the runner out at first.
But we did have one where the batter ripped a hard line-drive to short stop, where it was caught and everyone paused for a second before letting out a big cheer.
Everyone except the batter that is.
It's easy to forget during a practice with five and six-year-olds that cheering for one player sometimes leads to cheering against another.
Congratulations were then in order to both the batter and fielder, and we moved on.
It really is neat to watch them figure out that after they hit the ball, and hopefully drop the bat, they run to first base.
However, having them run to second, third, and home are three other completely different things.
We almost need three more practices to get those ideas down.
Instead, we have just two more practices and four total games, less if it rains, for the nine players to learn or refine their T-ball skills.
At the end of the first practice the skills were set aside and it was time to pick a team name.
Our colors are red and blue, so I tried getting everyone to agree to our name being the Jayhawks.
But I knew the chance of having nine players on the team all liking KU was slim, and I found out we had at least one who didn't want to say, "One, two, three, Jayhawks!"
Instead, a few just wanted our name to be Marion, and I thought that was practical enough.
Then I realized all four T-ball teams are from Marion so we settled on the most practical of all: one, two, three, Team!
