One of the toughest athletic feats is to hit a round ball with a round bat squarely. Hitting a softball requires exquisite eye/hand coordination and trained muscle memory. You need both of these factors working for you if you are to improve your ability to hit a softball. Don’t forget, the pitcher doesn’t throw the ball with the intention of letting the batter tee off on the pitch. The pitcher adds to the degree of difficulty by using skills to make the ball move, and to throw to spots where the hitter has the least chance of hitting it well.

With proper instruction and youth softball batting tips and drills, players can develop the skills to become adept batters. There are three key elements to softball batting: stance, stride and bat selection.

• Stance and Stride – Youngsters will naturally pick up a bat in the way that feels most comfortable to them. They will put left hand over right hand on the bat to swing as a left-handed batter, and with right hand over left to be a right-handed batter. From both sides of the plate, one of the key youth softball batting tips is to be comfortable at the plate. Since home plate is 17 inches in diameter, softball hitters need to stand close enough to the plate to cover the outside corner of the plate. Upon the release of the pitch, softball hitters need to move their front foot forward in the direction of the pitcher while simultaneously keeping their weight on the back foot. Batters then swing the bat forward with their hands and attempt to make square contact with the softball on the sweet part of the bat about three inches from the top end. Batting tips can be reinforced through batting drills either with a batting machine or with live pitching.

• Bat Selection – Youth softball instruction does not emphasize enough the importance of bat selection. One of the most important youth softball batting tips one can offer is for coaches and parents to allow their players, sons or daughters, to select a bat for themselves. They are the ones that must swing the bat at a ball propelled to home plate in an attempt to make them miss. The bat must be long enough to cover the outside corner of the plate, and light enough for the batter to handle the speed of the pitch. It is no surprise the youth softball hitters will sometimes switch bats in order to adjust to the different pitchers and their velocity.

Here are other key youth softball batting tips:

• Don’t Squeeze the Bat too hard – This will only slow down your bat speed.

• Keep your Eyes on the Ball – When the pitcher winds up, watch the ball at all times, and don’t be distracted by the pitcher’s wind-up.

• React, Don’t Think - When you are in the batter’s box, react to the pitch. Think about your mechanics when you are on the on deck circle waiting to hit, not when you are in the batter’s box.

If you follow these youth softball batting tips and practice hard, you will become the best softball hitter that you can be!

Finding the right softball drills for you:

Not all drills are appropriate for a 10 year old, and those that are may be too basic for a 16 year old. While you can find a wealth of softball drills scattered throughout the Internet, the key is to find a large library that lets you focus on your key skill (pitching drills, batting drills, hitting drills, fielding drills, etc.) and find the ones that are appropriate for your age group. If you spend some time looking for them, you can find videos, written instructions and even 3D animations that can be helpful.

At Weplay, we have collected and categorized such a library and have also highlighted several partners that similarly do a good job of teaching softball drills. Find the ones that are best for you and your team whether on Weplay or throughout the Internet and your practices will be much more productive.