The Whip It Drill: How to Handle Fielding and Throws Better
Recently I learned about a drill that improves ball handling when fielding a ground ball or fly ball from the outfield and focuses on quality throws from each defender on the field. The drill that I am referring to is the Whip It Drill. This drill was talked about on Coach Jonathan Gelnar's "Ahead of the Curve" Podcast. His guest was Arizona State University Assistant Coach Anthony Gillich. Coach Gillich has had a ton of success at Central Arizona, as their Head Coach and he provided listeners with a lot of sound coaching advice. I always enjoy hearing the separators of players of successful teams, and Gillich stated that a separator for his program is the Whip It Drill. Gillich said that this drill when done correctly translates to his team playing consistently clean defense, which allows his team to win.
The Drill Setup
To set up for this drill, you will need a full defense on the field. You can have all of your defenders on the field, or you can have one group of defenders running the bases and one group defending. If you split up your defenses into different groups you can turn this drill into a competition.
The Drill in Practice
A coach will hit ground balls, line drives, or fly balls into the outfield. There will be either a baserunner at second base or an imaginary runner at second base. The throw from the outfielder will be thrown to home. The catcher can either have the throw be relayed to him, or redirected to a base. Before the repetition is completed, each base will have had the ball and tag their base. It doesn't matter the order in which the throws will be made, but if you wanted to make it a challenge for all of your defenders to remember where the throws will go, you can have the coach call out where the throws will be made. This drill can be a stand-alone one, or it can be used before or after practicing traditional infield-outfield and double cuts and relays. Additionally, it is recommended that each outfielder gets two to three rounds of reps for the duration of this drill.
Example of Regular Whip It Drill
A coach hits a ground ball to the left fielder. The left fielder throws the fielded ball to the third baseman who is the cutoff/relay man. The catcher tells the third baseman to relay the throw home. The catcher then catches the throw and tags out the runner at home. Then the catcher throws to second base. The shortstop catches the throw, tags second base, and throws to third base, where the third baseman tags third and throws to the first baseman. The first baseman tags first and then throws that ball back to the catcher to complete the repetition.
Example of Memorization Whip It Drill
The coach calls out and says, "4, 2, 3, 1, 4." The coach hits a ground ball to the center fielder. The correct sequence is a throw to home, then to second base, then to third base, then to first base, and back home. If the team does this correctly with no throwing errors then they would receive a point. You can do this with two teams playing each other or one full team doing this. The beauty of this drill is it is simple, focuses on quality throws and fielding, and requires communication.
Comments
Post a Comment