A shortstop fields a clean grounder with a runner on first. Then he freezes, ball in hand, looking around for somewhere to throw it. By the time he picks a base, everyone is safe.

His glove work was fine. What broke down was the decision. More ground balls hit straight at him will not fix that, because nobody is asking him to decide anything.

This article covers one coaching approach built to fix exactly that: Decision Training, developed by Joan Vickers at the University of Calgary.

What Decision Training is

Vickers built Decision Training in the 1990s and taught it to Canadian national-level coaches through the National Coaching Institute in Calgary. Her core idea is simple. Athletes have to make decisions in games, so practice has to make them decide too.

She organized it into seven tools. Three matter most for a volunteer coach:

The trade-off Vickers describes: players often look worse in practice under this approach, then hold on to more later. A 1999 lab study by Vickers and colleagues reported that pattern. It was a lab study, not youth baseball, so treat it as support for the idea, not proof it works on your team.

Two newer reviews add useful limits. Game-based coaching showed a modest edge for decision skill but mostly no difference for technique (Bromilow and colleagues, 2025, mostly soccer). And the benefit of mixing reps was near zero in real-world and youth settings (Czyż and colleagues, 2024). So decision reps are worth building in, alongside the straight reps a kid still needs to learn the catch and throw.

The question structure: Before the rep: “Where's your play?” During the rep: say nothing. After the rep: “What did you see? What did you do? Why?” Then add only what they missed.

What it looks like on the field

Instruction version. Coach hits a grounder to short with nobody on. Player throws to first. Coach says, “Good, but get to it faster.” Next rep, same thing. The player never had to think about where the ball goes.

Decision version. Put a runner on first. Call the outs: “One out.” Before the ball is hit, ask the shortstop, “Where's your play?” A good answer: “Ground ball to me, I go to second for the force. If it's slow and I can't beat the runner, I take the out at first.”

Hit it. Let the runner run for real. Afterward, ask, “Where did you go and why?” If he went to first on a ball he could have turned to second, ask what he saw about the runner. Let him find it.

Now change one thing. Runner on second, nobody on first. Same ground ball. The runner is not forced to third, so the answer changes: look the runner back to second, then throw to first. That one switch, force versus no force, is the kind of read kids miss in games because practice never made them make it.

This version takes more time per rep. You get fewer reps. In exchange, every rep includes the part that breaks down in games.

The “Where's the play?” habit

The easiest piece to steal: before any live ball in practice, ask “Where's the play?” Players should answer from the situation (runners, outs, where the ball is likely to go), not from what you told them last time. It takes five seconds and needs no equipment.

For younger players, keep it to one question: “If it comes to you, where are you throwing?” For older players, add a backup: “And if it's slow?”

A question to ask about any drill: Is the player making a decision here, or am I making it for them? If I am making it, they are not practicing the part that fails in games.

What about the Quiet Eye?

Vickers is best known for a different finding, the “Quiet Eye.” Using eye tracking, she found that skilled performers in aiming tasks like basketball free throws and golf putts tend to settle their eyes on the target earlier and hold that gaze longer than less skilled performers. A 2016 meta-analysis found this pattern holds up across many studies, and that Quiet Eye can be trained. One small study found similar training helped children learn a throw-and-catch task.

What we do not have is good evidence for batting. Hitting a pitched ball is a reaction task, not an aiming task, and research on where skilled hitters look is limited. One Japanese study found expert batters tended to settle their eyes near the pitcher's elbow and release area, while novices' eyes wandered more. That supports a simple cue like “Get your eyes to the release window early.” It does not prove the cue will raise anyone's batting average.

Try this at practice

Guidelines & sources

Note on certainty: The case for making players decide in practice is reasonable and fits broader motor-learning research, but direct studies with youth baseball teams are scarce. Quiet Eye evidence is solid for aiming tasks and thin for hitting. The field examples are coaching practice, not research findings.