Scrambled Eggs Make for Better Sliding
by
Vince Muehe

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I've coached 10U and 12U ball players for a few years. One of the things that can be the most fun to teach is sliding.

Many coaches have used methods such as sliding in wet grass or having the player grab a bat held horizontal to get the feel for sliding. I'm not going to disagree with those methods - they work great. But to give the girls some incentive to learn sliding, I told them we'd practice with raw eggs in their hands!

We would start the season practicing to slide the same way most coaches do, wet grass, grabbing the bat, under a loosely held rope, etc. And when they were doing a pretty good job at it, I'd bring the eggs to practice. Just imagine two dozen eggs and one dozen 10 year old girls!

I'd line them up at 1st base. The object was to hold on to the eggs, run towards second, slide, and don't break the eggs! This promotes having the hands over the head and a nice clean slide into 2nd.

Don't give each girl two eggs - use the same two eggs over and over. After they've each made the trip to 2nd base twice (I doubt if your eggs will be broken yet), put a rope across the path -- about three feet in front of 2nd base for them to slide under. This will give them the incentive to stay low on the slide. MAKE SURE THE ROPE IS HELD VERY LOOSE!

After they've done that two times, take the eggs and have one of the players come and look at them. Point out the fact that there are lots of little cracks in the eggs and that they're getting pretty weak.

Now comes the fun part. Get the girls to slide into 2nd, pop-up and run to 3rd and slide. Then they should run to 1st and hand the eggs off. See if you can get through this without breaking the eggs!

The girls will have fun. The parents may think you're nuts, but I can pretty much guarantee you'll have taught young girls how to slide without putting their hands down to "brace the fall".