Starting Players Right: The First Fundamental

My approach is based on hundreds of private lessons with kids from ages 4 to 6. When you work with kids, I don’t believe that there is some specific blueprint of what you have to do to produce the best possible results. When you start getting into “systems” or “methods” or you start categorizing kids too much just by age, in my opinion that’s not the correct approach. You can have a 5-year old who has better hand-eye coordination than a 10-year old. I see that all the time. So to box someone in and say, We’re only going to use softballs for people 4 to 7, or we’re not going to do competition until we’re 10, or we’re not going to teach people continental grip on the serve because they’re 8 years old is incorrect. Because what it really comes down to is the ability level of the kid. It depends on the physicality of the person. So I think we’ve got to be really careful how we approach each kid. I believe that recognizing what to do with a particular kid and when to do it is in the eye of the beholder. But there are common threads…