Here’s a great way to introduce your coaches and kids to each other at your first few practices, its called the “Name Game”, don’t worry, its not the song. The first practice normally brings a bunch of individual children and their parents together who have never laid eyes on each other before the first practice. I like to start off with a brief introduction of myself and my assistant coach. I then will place each child on the bench together. I will place a base in front of them. I then play a name game with them. I call each child individually up from the bench to stand on the base and call out their first name. Each child then sits back down on the bench. I then call them back up to stand on the base in their previous order and I ask them not to say their name. I ask the team remaining on the bench to call out their teammate’s name. I repeat this process until each team member can remember each teammate’s name. I will then challenge them by calling up team members in random order to determine if each team member can remember each teammate’s name. I will play the name game before each practice until everyone knows each other’s names. Give it a shot, its a great way to break the ice for day one. A video demonstration of this drill is available for those who enroll at www.tballu.com or www.teeballuniversity.com .
This game works great for getting to know everyone’s names.