 With our winter training sessions wrapped up in mid-April, it is time for us to dig into our data!
While we have been sending our data to individual campers and their families throughout the winter, we've also been keeping our test in/test out in a handy spreadsheet. In my experience as a parent and web surfer, it's been hard to find "real" data for what a group of hitters and throwers looks like. There's a few reasons for this I can think of. The one that sticks out to me is that it's not in our best business interests to share? If you look at our aggregate data, you'll see that not every one of our winter campers posted an "improvement" in their numbers over six weeks. Hot take alert: any training group handing out a 100% improvement guarantee is probably cooking their books. Here are the trends I am happy to share though from our winter data: Of 47 hitters, 45 hitters were there to test out on week six. 40 of the 45 (88%) saw improvements in their exit velocity, swing speed, or both. Of 43 throwers, 38 were there to test out on week six. 29 of those 38 (76%) saw improvements in their top velocity or average velocity. What we are trying to do at Big Fish is create the environment and opportunities for athletes to improve. In the end, we tell our athletes it's their job to take advantage of that. And most importantly - any data is a snapshot in time. Because an athlete doesn't PR on test out day doesn't mean they aren't improving or didn't PR the week before. Tracking individual data over time - a 3-month period, a 6-month period, a year - that will give an individual athlete a more accurate picture. For what's it's worth - here is a link to our aggregate data for the '23-24 winter with names removed for confidentiality. The data is sorted by age level so you can see where kids are falling so far. It was a great winter season and start to what Big Fish is all about. We're working hard on plans to open a small facility in September, which should allow us to serve even more athletes and add more opportunity to Western Wisconsin baseball and softball. The future looks bright for both our Big Fish Athletes!
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 We had the great opportunity a few weeks ago on behalf of Big Fish to present to and work with the River Falls Youth Baseball Organization coaches about running effective practices and practice planning. Practice time for youth coaches continues to be a premium, whether that due to field constraints or the ever-increasing pressure to put the kids in uniform and play more games. Running fun, effective practices is so important to growing and maintaining a love for the game. In turn, that love for the game is a piece of what will drive athletes to put the work in away from practice that will give them a chance to make their high school teams.
The Philosophy of Effective Practice Effective practice starts with a positive environment. At Big Fish, we have some foundational blocks of what that looks like:
Practice planning We have you covered here with a few resources: Plan templates This is a good place to start with organizing your practices. For each of these templates, activities are broken into blocks of time. While we have read about 2 hour practices from other organizations, we advocate for about an hour and a half. We do have experience running one hour team practices, but in our experience that is too short to accomplish what you need. Practice Template - Infield, Outfield, and Hitting Focus (2 or more coaches) Practice Template - Pitchers and Catchers Focused (2 or more coaches) Practice Template - the "One coach" template Drill Library This is the Information Age, so there are so many drills out there right at your fingertips. We have started building this drill library at Big Fish with some of our favorites. The drill library should help you complete your template. Big Fish Drill Library Make sure you are taking advantage of all hands on deck - assistant coaches, parents - to keep the lines short and the kids moving. Don’t Forget Your Pitchers and Catchers... This is a mistake I made as a beginning youth coach that we are catching my son’s group up on this year (no pun intended!) While your athletes will hold down the catching position well enough, if you want them to excel you do have to take the time to teach blocking and receiving at practice. My advice is to try and build 4-5 catchers, which we are doing more of this summer. Please reach out! We are happy to work with individual youth coaches and associations on request as part of our mission at Big Fish. We are all in this together for the benefit of our kids and these great games of baseball and softball. Best of luck to everyone as you start your spring and summer seasons! |
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