Coaches Corner
Now is the time to develop your coaching skills so that you are ready for a great spring/summer season. Coach development is one of the key focus areas for our league in the 2009 season. Make a commitment to improve your knowledge to help yourself, your players, and the League. CAA is always looking for volunteers to coach. We know this is a learning process, and you don't need to be an expert to coach. We also host coaches clinics where we encourage all parents to attend.
- Activities for self-paced study
Your LittleLeagueCoach.org Authorization Code: 104697
For the safety of our children, all coaches in the CAA Baseball and Softball must grant permission for CAA to conduct a background check, which may include a review of the sex offender registries, child abuse and criminal history records.
The goal of our coaches is to develop the Baseball skills of all players and to care deeply about instilling a Mastery approach in their athletes, which will help them win throughout their lives. A simple way to remember the three keys to the Mastery approach is the acronym, ELM, where ELM stands for Effort, Learning, and Mistakes:
Effort - always give 100%
Learning- improve constantly as you gain more knowledge
Mistakes are OK - mistakes are how we learn.
We strongly encourage coaching training for all coaches and as an official Little League organization CAA has access to the Little League coach resource center. All new coaches need to enroll in the resource center to gain access to the valuable information. In addition, all coaches must attend the CAA Baseball coaching clinic each spring. CAA strongly encourages all of our tournament coaches to become certified.
Little League Local rules
Pitch Count Tools
Pitch Count Pitcher Eligibility
Pitching Fundamentals
(1) Start of the Delivery -
Find an area of the pitching rubber you feel comfortable with, i.e. – sometimes there is a deep rut in the middle. As you take your sign, hide the ball, either behind your leg or in your mitt.
(2) The Pivot -
Move your weight slightly onto your back foot, then turn your front foot to where it is parallel to the rubber and ready to push off.
Lift your front knee to about belt level as both shoulders point toward home plate. The back knee is slightly bent. Weight is on the balls of the pivot foot and the body is in balance.
If a windup is used, the arms are brought up just above the forehead, then down to where the hands are at about belly level and near the body.
(3) The Stride -
As you stride, move your throwing hand down and back up extending the arm. Stride to the same point on every pitch with the toes pointing toward the plate. The striding knee should be slightly bent so the body isn’t jarred when the foot lands.
Coaching point – emphasize using the legs. Great pitchers use their legs to get power and save wear and tear on the arm. As you stride, push off with the back leg and rotate your hips.
Coaching point – put a line in the dirt from the rubber directly toward home plate. A right-handed pitcher should land slightly to the left of the line so as not to be throwing across his body (and vice versa for lefties).
(4) The Pitch -
The elbow should be up when the front foot lands and the front knee should be bent. This allows proper hip action to take place. The wrist is cocked as the elbow leads the throw. At release, the leg push, hip rotation, the wrist uncocking, and the arm straightening all combine to provide velocity to the pitch.
(5) Follow Through -
Keep the head in line with the target. Bend your back. The glove ends up behind your back.
Coaching point – to emphasize bending the back and following through properly, have the pitcher touch a hat on the ground, 6 inches in front of and slightly outside the pivot foot. If a pitcher doesn’t bend his back, he may be wild high, lose speed, and strain his arm.
After the pitching arm is brought low and in front of the striding knee, bring the pivot leg forward and prepare to be a fielder with the weight on the balls of the feet, knees slightly bent and glove in front.
Pitching Drill -
Warm up the body by jogging, then stretching.
Play short catch but use full arm extension. Gradually step back as your arm warms up until you are 60 to 120 feet apart (depending on the age). Throw flat, hard, accurate throws at distance to develop arm strength. Strengthen your arm but don’t stress it.