8 Simple Ways to Make Ordinary Youth Practices Extraordinary

🎶 Music must be blasting as kids exit the car

We want a multisensory experience.

Music gets the good vibes going before practice.

Blast music before practice and throughout practice.

It just feels better this way.

📖 Use storytelling to teach life lessons

Instead of talking about life lessons, teach them through stories. Begin each practice with an intentional new lesson told through some type of true or fictional story. Kids tend to listen m🧵⚾🥎ore to an immersive story than straight teaching.

Examples:

• Resilience: Jackie Robinson
• Positivity: Big Papi
• Teamwork: Derek Jeter
• Hard Work: Cal Ripken
• Hustle: Pete Rose

I’m sure you can find detailed stories on the internet that map to each life lesson.

🌀 Differentiate your warm-up

One of my biggest pet peeves is the same warm-up routine every day. How lame!

Dynamic warm-ups can be a waste of time when better possibilities exist to get kids moving and energized.

Here are more fun ideas for a warm-up:

• Sharks and Minnows
• Rock Paper Scissors Tournament
• Chaos Tag / Blob Tag
• Dance Party
• Red Light / Green Light
• Steal the Bacon
• Meditation
• Baseball Yoga

We’ll typically do one of these in addition to a baserunning warm-up.

🔄 Use stations for instruction and reps

You probably do this. Every good youth coach does!

It’s rare to run a good youth practice without this because kids can’t focus on one thing for more than 10-15 minutes.

1 coach cannot meaningfully engage more than 6 kids at once.

So if you have 3 coaches and 15 kids, split into 3 groups of 5 for 10-15 minutes and rotate them through each station for different skills.

Small group rotations make youth practices effective.

🏆 Make every drill or activity a competition

I cannot stress how important this is.

If practices aim to improve skills, engagement is key.

And kids are MOST engaged when they are competing.

Every drill station MUST have a clear competition with a winner and a reward.

We go beyond verbal praise with our prize system.

🎉 End with something intentionally meant for FUN

End with a game or activity that is FUN!

Scrimmage or SpeedBall scrimmage can do it, but don’t end with a basic skill drill.

The peak-end theory states kids remember the highlights and especially the END.

Always finish on something fun and uplifting!

🎁 Implement a prize or reward system

There’s ZERO issue with motivating kids for great behavior, hard work, teamwork, focus, and winning with prizes.

We bought a ton of wooden “tokens” and hand them out for accomplishments in practices, games, and for at-home challenges.

Kids collect tokens to “buy” prizes at our Legends store on game days, like:

• Baseball cards
• Bubble gum
• Headbands
• Wristbands
• Sweatbands
• Keychains
• Candy
• Fidget spinners
• Arm sleeves

🏅 Players of the Day awards

Highlighting players who focus and work hard is powerful.

We make custom magnets as rewards for kids who best embody the life lesson of the day.

Families then put these magnets on their cars as a badge of honor, which serves as free program marketing.

It sends 1-2 kids home feeling great while reinforcing teachable experiences.

These are just a few ways to elevate standard youth practices into something truly extraordinary.

What are some ways you make your practices memorable and engaging?

Share your ideas in the comments – I’d love to hear what other youth coaches are doing!

Let’s build a bank of ideas for any coach to make practices more fun, impactful, and memorable for the kids!

Thanks for reading, sharing, and supporting.

In your corner,
👨‍✈️Captain Fun

PS: I’m presenting on the youth stage this year at @abca1945 on this topic. Be sure to catch my session if you’ll be in DC!

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