Defense Wins Championships, and Loses Them Too!

While offense and pitching get all the press it’s team defense that wins championships. Simple plays like fielding groundballs, catching flyballs and making good throws are what really make the difference in close ball games.

Do you know how to practice these keys and how they fit into the defensive pyramid?

The Defensive Pyramid is designed to show all the defensive skills that players and teams need and the order of importance for each one. The defensive pyramid shows 5 different levels on it with various skills in each level. The lower that each skill is on the pyramid the more important it is to your team’s success and the more often that skill should be practiced. Championship teams know this, but do you?

So for instance, you’ll see skills like Throwing, Receiving, Fielding Groundballs and Fielding Flyballs in the very bottom level of the pyramid. These are the building blocks for your team’s defense. These simple, and yet vital defensive skills should be practiced every day and should be mastered by all of your players.

Also, you’ll notice that each block of the pyramid depends on the strength of the one before it, and should be practiced in relationship to the size of the block. So for instance, throwing and catching are listed in the lowest and largest block and trick plays are listed in the smallest and highest block – so throwing and catching should be practiced more often and before ever attempting trick plays. The reason for this is that all trick plays, which is what everybody likes to do because they’re cool, well they all depend on your player’s ability to throw and catch successfully. If you can’t throw and catch, you won’t have any trick plays, it’s that simple!