10U Softball Practice Plan: Three Full Practices + Drills

This is the complete 10U softball practice plan: three practices you can run this week, a pitcher and catcher block for girls who started pitching in March, the ten drills that matter at this age, and the mistakes that turn a 10U practice into an hour of standing in line. It is part of the full set of softball practice plans by age, which has the 90-minute structure every plan below is built on, plus 12U, 14U, high school and indoor. You do not need the hub to run these.

It is written for fastpitch and for the age. The 11-inch ball, the 35-foot circle and no dropped third strike make 10U different from everything above it. So does the fact that matters most: a ten-year-old gives you seven good minutes at a station, then needs a new one.

Jump to:

• What changes at 10U
• What a 10U player can and cannot do yet
• The 90-minute 10U practice plan · The 75-minute short-night plan · The pre-game or light-day plan
• Pitchers and catchers at 10U
• The drills that matter at 10U
• Common 10U mistakes · The other five days

What changes at 10U

10U is the first tier where the game looks like softball: a player in the circle, a catcher in gear, runners who can steal, an umpire calling a strike zone. It is also the last tier before the jump. The ball is still 11 inches, the circle is still 35 feet, and a strikeout is still an out. The plan's job is to build the mechanics that survive the move to 12U, not to win Saturday, though those turn out to be the same thing.

Those are the common USA Softball Junior Olympic fastpitch rules for 10-under, and 10U is the tier where local leagues differ from them most. Check your league's sheet before you spend a station on a rule. The lines that move most:

• When runners can leave. USA Softball says on release. Little League softball and many rec leagues hold the runner until the ball reaches the batter, which makes the release read pointless.
• Whether stealing is allowed, and whether home is included. Many leagues close home, bar advancing on a passed ball, or cap steals per inning. If home is closed, the catcher's practice job is receiving and the throw to second.
• The dropped third strike. Commonly not in play at 10U. If your league turns it on early, borrow the block-and-throw rep from the 12U plan and run it at 35 feet.
• Coach-pitch and kid-pitch. Some rec leagues run 10U as coach-pitch, or a hybrid where the coach pitches after four balls. The plan assumes kid-pitch; the FAQ covers coach-pitch.
• Everything else. Time limits, run rules, courtesy runners and innings-per-pitcher limits vary by league and are not stated here.

What a 10U player can and cannot do yet

What she can do. Learn to throw correctly, the single most valuable thing that happens at 10U. Field a rolled ground ball with two hands and her feet moving. Catch a fly ball above her eyes if it is tossed, and most of them if it is thrown. Hit off a tee with a swing she can repeat, and hit honest front toss. Run through first base. Follow one correction at a time, if it is short and comes right before the rep. Work at a station for seven minutes with an adult on it. Show up, if practice is somewhere she wants to be.

What she cannot do yet. Run a station from an index card; at 10U every station has an adult on it, which is why the plan counts parents. Hold two corrections at once; the second erases the first. Understand a play she has not walked through, which is why the situational block is one play, repeated. Throw a runner out at second. Track her own pitch count. Keep her focus through a fifteen-minute block, a ten-minute speech, or a line of six. Manage her own practice week; her parents own it.

The spread. A 10U roster runs from a nine-year-old in her first season of kid-pitch to a ten-year-old who has played travel ball since she was seven. Nobody is good enough yet to be bored, so it is easier to coach than at 12U. Every station below has a harder version, usually the same drill with a thrown ball.

The 90-minute 10U practice plan

The hub says a 10U practice should be 75 minutes, and it is right about the work. Most leagues hand you a 90-minute slot anyway. This plan is 75 minutes of stations inside a 90-minute slot: the first ten are an arrival that starts without you, because 10U players show up over a ten-minute window with a parent behind them, and the last thirteen are a scored game they would stay for. Nobody stands around. Two coaches assumed, plus one parent willing to roll ground balls.

If you are the only adult. Ask a parent before practice, not during. A parent rolling ground balls is a station; a parent holding the bucket at front toss is a station. Run three stations per block with a parent on one, and take the pitcher and catcher station yourself for its first three minutes, because that one needs someone who knows what a pitch should look like. If you truly have nobody, drop to two stations, keep the pitchers and catchers, and make the tee station self-run into a net.

If you have three. Add a fourth defensive station: baserunning. Through the bag at first, a round toward second on a ball to the outfield, and leaving on release off a coach's arm if your league allows it. Ten minutes, and it fixes the runner who stops at first to look for the ball.

The 75-minute short-night plan

At 10U this is not really the short-night plan. It is the plan. Seventy-five minutes is the right length for the age; the 90-minute version above is the same practice with a slower arrival and a game bolted on. Run this one when the slot is 75, on school nights, and in the first week of the season.

The scored situational block is the game on a short night. Ten-year-olds run the same play twelve times if the score is on a whiteboard and twice if it is not. The score is how you buy the reps.

The pre-game or light-day plan

The day before a game, nothing new gets taught. Arms stay short, the girl pitching tomorrow throws enough to find the plate and stops, and the situational block runs the one play she will see on every ground ball. Sixty minutes, and the close tells the parents where to be and when.

If the game is tonight and you have the field for forty-five minutes beforehand, cut everything after throwing to the pitcher's warm-up and one round of ground balls. A pre-game practice that leaves ten-year-olds tired is worse than none.

Pitchers and catchers at 10U

Two or three girls on a 10U roster decided to pitch this year, usually because a parent bought a bucket of balls. They are the most important players on the field for the next two seasons and the ones most 10U practices ignore, because they end up throwing to each other by the fence with nobody counting. Give them ten minutes of their own in the defensive block, at 35 feet, with a catcher in gear, and count.

Workload is reps, written down. There is no widely adopted published pitch-count standard in fastpitch, so the numbers below are deliberately conservative, and the number that matters is the week: a girl who pitched three innings Saturday gets wrist snaps and half a bullpen on Monday. Nothing here measures how hard she throws; a radar gun at a 10U bullpen teaches a nine-year-old to muscle the ball, and the mechanics you built in March are gone by May.

One pitch at 10U, and it is the fastball. A change-up is a 12U project for a girl who can throw a strike when she wants to; at 10U a second grip costs her the first. What you are building this year is an arm circle she does not have to think about and a release point she can find on purpose.

For catchers, the order is receiving, then throwing, then the blocking shape, every practice, all season. At 10U most passed balls are pitches she could have caught. Blocking on a mat is a 12U drill on the hub, and it stays there. Write down what each pitcher threw and keep it with the plan; in April, when a parent asks why her daughter did not pitch Saturday, the answer is a number.

The drills that matter at 10U

The ten drills the plans above run most, with the coaching point on each. Where a drill is in the hub's drill index, the name matches.

1. One-knee progression. Glove-side knee down, throwing-side knee up, 15 throws at 20 feet. The coaching point: the arm slot and wrist snap are right before the feet get involved.
2. 21. Partners at 45 feet; a chest-high throw is two points, a catchable throw is one, first to 21. The coaching point: accuracy has a score attached, so she throws to a target instead of throwing hard.
3. Rolled ground balls, two hands. Rolled by a coach or a parent, 20 reps. The coaching point: the fielding position is the whole lesson, and a thrown ball hides it.
4. Underhand fly balls. Tossed underhand first, then thrown, 15 reps. The coaching point: above the eyes with two hands; a catch at the waist drops the one that matters.
5. Tee routine. The hub's five stations, middle, inside, outside, high, low, five swings each. The coaching point: this is the routine she runs at home into a net, so she has to know it well enough to run alone.
6. Front toss. Coach on one knee behind a screen, honest tosses, 15 swings. No counts until 12U. The coaching point: the toss has to be hittable; tossing to see if she chases steals swings from a hitter who needs them.
7. Sacrifice bunt off a partner toss. Partner tosses underhand from 15 feet, 10 bunts. The coaching point: the bat stays in the top of the zone and she catches the ball with it. Drag and push are 12U.
8. Through the bag at first. Ground ball, runner goes, she runs through the base and looks right. The hub files it under rounding first and tag-ups; at 10U only the first part matters.
9. Receiving off front toss. For catchers: partner tosses to the glove side, catcher sticks it, 20 to 30 catches. The coaching point: glove up before the pitch, catch it where it is.
10. Bullpen at 35 feet. The hub's bullpen at the age's distance, 30 to 40 pitches, counted out loud and written down. The coaching point: one cue per bullpen, chosen before practice. No radar gun.

Common 10U mistakes

Most of these come from running a plan built for older players.

• Ninety minutes of drills. That is a 75-minute practice with 15 minutes of standing around, and the standing around is what the players remember.
• Fifteen-minute stations. Seven is the number. After that she is picking grass. Change the station, not the child.
• Twelve players at one tee. A swing every two minutes each. Three stations of four is a swing every thirty seconds, and the parent at the bucket is the third station.
• Two corrections at once. The second erases the first. Pick the cue before the rep and say it once.
• Thrown ground balls before rolled ones. A thrown ball tests a fielding position she has not built. Roll it until two hands and moving feet are automatic.
• Letting the pitchers throw to each other by the fence. Nobody counts, nobody watches the arm circle, and your future 12U pitcher spends the season building a habit you will have to break.
• A radar gun at a 10U bullpen. It measures the one thing that does not matter yet, and teaches her to chase it.
• Teaching the dropped third strike. It is not in play at 10U in most leagues. Fifteen minutes on a rule your umpires will not call is fifteen minutes not spent running through first.
• Running the situational block without a score. Ten-year-olds run a play twelve times with a score on a whiteboard and twice without.
• No plan for the days between practices. Covered below. At 10U their parents own those days.

The other five days

A 10U team practices once or twice a week. Call it two and a half hours. Everything on this page is for those hours; the other 165 belong to the players and, at this age, to their parents. The players who arrive in May with a swing they can repeat did something in those hours, and at 10U the honest version is that a parent stood in the driveway with them.

The between-practice work at 10U is short, specific, and built to be run by a parent who has never played: the one-knee progression with a parent catching, the tee routine into a net, pitchers' wrist snaps at 15 feet, catchers' receiving off a parent's underhand toss, and running through a base drawn in chalk. Fifteen to twenty minutes, three days a week. It needs a plan and someone to say "again," not a field.

That is what Next Athletix does for a softball coach. It does not write your practice plan; this page is the practice plan. It assigns daily, position-specific training sessions to your roster between practices and shows you who did them. You create the team and show the QR code on your phone at one practice. At 10U every player is under 13, so a parent goes through the invite: the scan opens a signup tied to your team, the parent creates the account, and the athlete is connected to the roster from the same invite. Your dashboard shows who did the work this week, who is on a streak, and who has gone quiet, which turns the close of your next practice from a guess into a sentence: "Nine of twelve did their sessions this week."

Be straight with parents about what it is. A coach account is free. A free athlete account gets one sample session a week; the full plan runs on the Training plan, which is per athlete with a 7-day free trial, and athletes and parents subscribe on their own account with nothing billed to you. Pricing is here. It is not a recruiting service and it does not replace the practice you just planned. If your team wants a structured winter, the off-season softball training plan is the 12-week version of the same idea.

Print it

Everything above is the plan. Print the page or send the link to your assistant coaches and the parent who rolls ground balls; there is nothing to sign up for. The hub has the 90-minute structure, the blank template and the full drill index. Next for this roster is the 12U softball practice plan, where the 12-inch ball, the 40-foot circle and the dropped third strike are waiting; the 14U plan is the one after that. If you want the between-practice work assigned and tracked, that is what the free coach account is for.