Showcase Softball Tryout Prep: The 6-Week Plan

Built to be run alone, against a wall or a net, or with one partner feeding. If you pitch or catch, your position-specific work stays with your pitching or catching coach; this is everything else.

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One knee at ten feet, wrist flips, fifteen throws. Twenty feet, fifteen more. Forty, sixty, eighty feet, twelve each, easy arc. Stop at eighty. Six weeks is enough to build an arm; it is also enough time to hurt one by throwing hard cold in week one. Volume goes up over weeks, not days.

Fifty swings across three tee settings, and the only thing you track is how many were hard, on the barrel, on a line. Front foot soft and closed, hands inside, hips lead the hands. Ignore where it went; a hard ball the other way and a hard ball pulled are the same swing.

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Ladder to eighty, then walk it back in twenty-foot steps as far as you can throw with an arc and no strain, hold there for ten throws, then walk it back in throwing on a line. Long toss builds the arm coaches see on the throw from the hole. Two days a week, never on back-to-back days.

Forty firm pitches, in and out on purpose. Inside gets pulled hard, outside goes hard the other way, middle goes back at the screen. Take the balls and say "ball." Then ten bunts, caught with the barrel, bat angled up.

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Infielders: ten backhands (plant the right foot, throw off it), ten slow rollers on the run, ten feeds to second from your position. Outfielders: ten balls to the glove side and ten to the arm side with a crow hop and a one-hop throw to a base, then five do-or-die charges. Catchers: ten blocks and ten throws to second on a clock, with your catching coach. College coaches watch the play that is not routine.

Six timed sprints from a swing through the front edge of the bag. Then five first-to-third reads: partner throws a ball into the outfield grass, you round second hard and pick up the coach or a marker for the wave. Speed is a time on a stopwatch; base running is what you do with it.

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Sprint sixty feet, then field five ground balls and throw each one at the target. Rest sixty seconds. Five sets. By set four your feet will want to stop moving. That is the drill: keep the feet alive when the legs are gone, because day two of any evaluation is played tired.

Thirty pitches with a job on each: runner on second, get her over; two strikes, shorten up and put it in play; runner on third with fewer than two outs, ball to the right side or in the air. Say the job before the pitch. Live at-bats at a showcase come with situations and with pitchers you have never seen.

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Practice what happens between pitches: step out, one breath, look at the third-base coach, back in, same setup every time. Then the same thing after a strikeout: bat down, walk back, next pitch. Coaches at this level watch the kid between pitches because that is where the player they will live with for four years shows up.

If there is a machine or a pitcher available, twenty at-bats at real speed, tracking hard contact only. If not, front toss from twelve feet, faster than comfortable. Then fifteen throws at the target from sixty with a crow hop. Nothing new; everything faster.

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Ladder to eighty, ten throws at the target from sixty, done. The arm is in the bank. No long toss this week.

Twenty-five good swings off the tee, then walk through the plays at your position at half speed, saying where the ball goes with a runner on first and one out. The two days before the evaluation, nothing is new. Then sleep.

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Run the plan, then after the evaluation tell us which position they put you at, how the arm felt on the long throw, and what the coach said about playing time. That is where the next plan starts.