These aren't textbook drills. These are games we actually ran with our 8 and 9-year-olds. We lean on them for a simple reason: small-sided, game-like play gives kids more touches, more decisions, and more fun than standing in line. Does it beat drills for learning? The research (mostly small soccer studies) finds about a draw on technique and a modest edge for games on decision-making. So we play first and drill when a brand-new skill needs it. The specific games are ours. Most of these land hardest at ages 6 to 10; older kids want the competition without the costume, so strip the theme and keep the constraint.
Source: Bromilow et al. (2025), Sports Medicine Open. What the games vs drills research says →
Two teams. Soft rubber dodgeballs (or rolled-up socks if you forgot the balls). Split the field down the middle with cones. Standard dodgeball rules. If you get hit, you sit. If you catch one, the thrower sits. Play until one team is out, then reset.
Pair up the team. Start with partners 15 feet apart, normal catch. Every clean exchange both partners take a step back. Miss it, partners stay where they are. Drop it, take a step in. The team that ends up farthest apart wins.
Repeat 2–3 times. Set a max-distance cone line that fits the age, so it stays a catch game and never turns into a long-throw contest.
Partners can only step back if the catch was clean. No bobbles. No on-a-hop. No reaching out and dropping it. This forces both throwers to throw accurately and catchers to actually move their feet.
Split the team into pairs. Pairs line up at home plate (or the foul line). Coach rolls or hits a ball to the outfield fence. On the call, the first pair sprints out together. One player goes all the way to the ball. The other player stops at the cutoff position and waits.
While the outfielder runs down the ball, the cutoff gets lined up between the ball and the target base, arms up, yelling "Hit me!" The outfielder hits the cutoff. The cutoff catches it turning to the glove side, listens for the call from a coach or teammate at the target ("Home!" or "Two!"), and relays it there.
Time them. Run 2–3 rounds. Switch which kid is the outfielder, which is the cutoff.
At the 8 and 9-year-old level, the ball gets out to the outfield and dies there. The outfielder picks it up, throws it 20 feet, and now there's no play. The runners take an extra base. The defense never has a chance.
Getting the ball to a cutoff fixes a lot of that. It is one of the biggest gaps we see at this age, and it is a hard thing to learn from a diagram.
Make it a race and they want to run it again.
Two teams. No gloves. Coach hits tennis balls into the air (a tennis racket works great for this). The fielding team has to catch the fly balls bare-handed.
Every ball that drops is a run for the other team. One catch is 3 outs: instant inning over. Teams flip sides. Play a few innings. Fewest runs given up wins.
A tennis ball is soft enough to catch barehanded, and bare hands give fast feedback. Kids who try to catch it with stiff hands or one hand find out quickly that it pops out. Soft hands, two hands, eyes on it. The ball gives the feedback so you don't have to.
Every kid tucks their hat into the back of their belt or waistband, like a flag. Free-for-all in a defined area. Kids try to grab other players' hats while protecting their own. Lose your hat, you're out and you sit. Last kid with a hat wins.
5 minutes a round. Run 2–3 rounds.
What it gets them doing:
It almost always gets a laugh. Kids who showed up tired are usually ready by the end of round two.
Bring a Nerf football to practice. Split into teams of 3 or 4. Small field. Touchdown counts as a score. You can't run with the ball. You have to throw to a teammate to advance. Defense plays one-hand touch.
Play in short bursts. 5-minute games. Switch teams. Keep moving.
It is still throwing, catching, and moving to open space, just with a different ball. Kids have to find a teammate, get open, and decide fast.
It also breaks up the routine. A fresh game is an easy way to get a flat group re-engaged.
Fill 50+ water balloons before practice (this is the heavy lift, literally). Bring them in coolers. Split the team. Cones for a center line. Throw them at each other. That's the game.
For a slight skill twist: balloons can only be thrown overhand, from a proper throwing motion. Sidearm-tosses or shovel-throws don't count.
Last day of the season. Kids vs. parents. Players bat normally. Parents have to bat with handicaps. Wiffle bats, softballs, no warm-up swings. They have to carry weights when they run the bases. They might have to do an obstacle course on the way to first.
The more ridiculous the handicaps, the better. Get creative. Make parents hop on one foot to second base. Make them spin around a bat before they run.
Kids play it straight. Try hard. Try to win. The parents do their best, but the deck is stacked.
The kids absolutely lose their minds. Three months of being coached by these adults, and now they get to compete against them and win. Parents are sweaty and laughing. Grandparents are heckling from the bleachers. Younger siblings are getting in on it.
You will never get a better photo of a season than the moment your team mobs a parent at home plate.
We wrote up an actual practice from a Tuesday night with our 8 and 9-year-olds. Five games in 60 minutes, with kids moving almost the whole time.
See the practice →