so much to blog about... so little time...

There's too much to blog about right now, so I'll have to create a series of posts to blog about soon regarding:

- our parent / teacher conference

- Mercer riding his bike

- going apple picking

- halloween (coming up in a couple of days)

Now... a post about T-ball:

Todd coached Mercer + five other 3-5 year olds through their first season of organized baseball.  There was one child who was really hard to control (the youngest) and a couple of others who didn't really ever seem to "get it."  But - the other 3 (including Mercer) did seem to understand the sport and actually showed a lot of progress since the first practice and first game.  Actually, one of the coaches from the other teams pulled Todd aside to talk to him about Mercer's abilities towards the end of the season.

 

Mercer was an anxious ball player, was quick to field the ball from almost any position he was playing (except first base... he learned to stay put when he was on 1st), he was getting pretty good at throwing, and could hit some of the balls from the live pitches.  Sometimes he seemed a little over-anxious as he wanted to control the ball during each play - but as someone told us - this is better than him not being that interested in making the play.

This level of game was perfect in that no score was kept.  All of the kids got to bat each inning. They actually got the chance to hit balls pitched.  If they didn't make it after a certain # of pitches, they would then be able to hit off of the tee.   If they got out, they stayed on base / stayed in the game.  

Some of my favorite memories of the season:

- one of the kids during a game hit the ball, then ran to first.  he didn't stop, however.

- once all of the kids hit, the team runs all of the bases to clear the field.  this same kid was on 2nd base & upon urging by "coach Todd" to run to home -- the kid made a diagonal from 2nd to home plate. Actually - this was quite smart as it was the shortest distance there~

- early in the season, Todd made up a very important rule:  no tackling your team-mates!  The youngest kid asked "but what about tickling your team-mates?"  

- the last couple of games, one of the little boys kept calling me "Mrs Coach" when he had a question (I was usually in the dugout with the kids trying to keep order, doling out water, and getting them out onto the field when it was their turn to bat.)

- the kids were more interested in snacks after the game and other kids outside the fence.    

- each practice, Todd gave away baseball cards to motivate the boys + on game days, one of them got the game ball.  the kids were perhaps more excited about who would get the game ball than they were about snacks.

 

Todd was happy to see how excited Mercer was about baseball -- always wanting to practice at home.  Todd was always rewarded by the improvement he saw in all of the players since the beginning of the season.  It was a lot of work, but he said that he enjoyed coaching more than he thought he would. I actually really enjoyed watching Todd interact with the kids.  He did a great job commanding their attention while making learning baseball rules and techniques fun.