12U Softball Practice Plan: Three Full Practices + Drills

This is the complete 12U softball practice plan: three practices you can run this week, a pitcher and catcher block built for the 40-foot circle, the ten drills that matter at this age, and the mistakes that cost 12U teams runs. 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 10U, 14U, high school and an indoor plan. You do not need the hub to run these; the structure is repeated here.

It is written for fastpitch. The 12-inch ball, the 40-foot circle, runners leaving on release and the dropped third strike are what make 12U different from 10U, and the plans are built around them rather than around a baseball plan with the word changed.

Jump to:

• What changes at 12U
• What a 12U player can and cannot do yet
• The 90-minute 12U practice plan · The 75-minute short-night plan · The pre-game or light-day plan
• Pitchers and catchers at 12U
• The drills that matter at 12U
• Common 12U mistakes · The other five days

What changes at 12U

12U is the jump. At 10U the ball is smaller, the circle is closer, and a strikeout is an out. At 12U the ball goes to 12 inches, the circle moves to 40 feet, and a dropped third strike puts the batter on the line running. Pitchers who were lobbing last year are throwing hard enough that catchers have to block, runners leave on release and go on any ball in the dirt, and a team that cannot handle a bunt or a passed ball gives away four runs an inning without the other team hitting the ball out of the infield.

The practice plan changes with it. At 10U you are teaching skills. At 12U you are still teaching skills, but the situational block, the fifteen minutes where a live runner tests whether the catcher blocks and the corners charge, becomes the most important block on the field.

These are USA Softball Junior Olympic fastpitch rules for the 12-under division. Other sanctioning bodies and most rec leagues differ in at least one of these lines, usually stealing, courtesy runners or a time limit, so check the rule sheet for the league you actually play in before you spend fifteen minutes teaching a rule your umpires will not call.

What a 12U player can and cannot do yet

What she can do. Run a station from an index card without a coach standing on it. Hold two corrections at once, and use the second one while still working on the first. Understand why the play works, which means you can explain bunt coverage once and then run it, instead of walking her to the spot every rep. Throw accurately across the infield at 60 feet. Hit a ball coming at speed off front toss. Read a pitcher's hand and leave on release. Get a sacrifice bunt down.

What she cannot do yet. Throw a runner out at second consistently; the arm strength is arriving but the transfer and footwork are not automatic, which is why the catcher station is mechanics, not pop times. Locate more than two pitches. Hit a rise ball, or a change-up from a pitcher who sells it. Make the decision on a first-and-third without being told what to look for. Keep her focus on one station for longer than eight to ten minutes. Manage her own throwing volume, which is why the coach counts.

The spread. A 12U roster has the widest skill range of any tier: an eleven-year-old in her first year next to a twelve-year-old who pitched two seasons at 10U. Every station below has a base version and a harder version written into the table so an assistant can run it. Build the practice around stations each player can run at her own level, not around the top three or the bottom three.

The 90-minute 12U practice plan

The six blocks from the hub, filled in for 12U. Two coaches assumed. The coach cue is the sentence that starts each block, so the transition takes ten seconds and the players are moving before you finish it.

If you are the only adult. Drop to three stations in each block and make one self-run: a tee into a net, short hops off the fence, or partner throwing with a rep count on the card. Keep the pitcher and catcher station and put yourself on it for the first four minutes, then move to the infield. A 12U pitcher who never throws a bullpen with a coach watching is being trained by her parents on the driveway, not by you.

If you have three. Add a fourth defensive station: baserunning. Rounding first, tag-ups from second, and reads on a ball in the dirt with a coach throwing to a catcher who sometimes blocks and sometimes does not. It is the cheapest fifteen runs a season you will ever find.

The 75-minute short-night plan

School night, the field opens at 6:00, and in March the light is gone by 7:15. Do not run the 90-minute plan fast. Cut it. The throwing progression and the pitcher and catcher station stay whole because they are the two things that cannot be made up on a different night; the hitting block drops to three stations and the situational block runs one situation instead of two.

Live hitting off a pitcher is the block that goes when time is short, not the tee. The swing is built on the tee and front toss; live is where you find out whether it held. On a short night you can afford to find out on Saturday.

The pre-game or light-day plan

The day before a game, or the morning of a tournament day, the plan has a different job. Nothing new gets taught. Arms are kept short, the pitcher who is starting tomorrow throws enough to find the strike zone and stops, and the situational block runs the one play the opponent is most likely to give you. Sixty minutes, and the close names the lineup so nobody's parent asks in the parking lot.

If the game is tonight and you have the field for an hour beforehand, cut everything after throwing to the pitcher's warm-up and one round of ground balls. A pre-game practice that leaves players tired is worse than no practice.

Pitchers and catchers at 12U

This is the station most 12U teams skip, because it needs an adult who knows what a bullpen looks like and because the pitchers' parents are already doing something on the driveway. Do it anyway. Everything on a 12U field depends on whether the catcher can block and whether the pitcher can throw a strike when she wants to, and neither gets built by the two of them throwing to each other in a corner while you run infield.

The block is eight minutes inside the defensive block on a normal night, and the sequence below is what the eight minutes hold. Workload is counted in reps and written down. There is no widely adopted published pitch-count standard in fastpitch, so the numbers are deliberately conservative, and the number that matters is the week, not the practice: a pitcher who threw a full game on Saturday gets spins and half a bullpen on Monday, and a catcher who caught a doubleheader gets receiving and no throw-downs.

Two pitches only at 12U: a fastball she can put on both sides of the plate and a change-up she can throw with the same arm speed. That is a full season's worth of work, and a pitcher with those two will get through 12U. A drop, rise or curve added before the first two are reliable is a third pitch she cannot locate, and it usually costs her the fastball command she had. Spins for a third pitch can start at close distance when the first two are automatic; the pitch itself goes in the bullpen the year after.

For catchers, the order is receiving, then blocking, then throwing, every practice, all season. Receiving is the skill she uses on every pitch. Blocking ends the free steal. The throw to second arrives last, and it arrives faster drilled off a coach's toss than by trying to throw out live runners she has no chance against yet. Write down what each pitcher threw and keep the page with the practice plan. In April, when a parent asks why her daughter did not pitch Saturday, the answer is a number, not a feeling.

The drills that matter at 12U

The ten drills the plans above run most, with the coaching point on each. Names are the hub's, so the drill index there and the plans here match.

1. Blocking on a mat. Soft balls or tennis balls, 15 to 20 reps. Chin down, glove between the knees, the ball dies in front of her. The coaching point: the knees drop toward the pitch, not straight down.
2. Throw-downs off a coach's toss. Catcher catches, transfers, steps and throws to second with an infielder on the bag. The coaching point is the transfer: glove to the throwing hand at the chest, feet already moving before the ball is out of the glove. No stopwatch at 12U.
3. Steal starts off the pitcher's hand. Five a practice, every practice, in the warm-up. The runner watches the pitcher's hand, not the ball, and leaves on release. The coaching point: leaving on release instead of on contact is the difference between a stolen base and an out, and the read is trained, not guessed.
4. Bunt coverage with a live runner. A live bunter, a live runner at first, the corners charge, the middle infielders cover the bags. Run from both sides until the first baseman and third baseman charge without being told. The coaching point is that the first step happens on the bunt attempt, not on the bunt.
5. Short hops, forehand and backhand. Off a wall, a fence or a partner, 40 to 60 reps. The coaching point is the feet: the glove foot moves first and the glove follows, and the ball is caught out in front where she can see it.
6. Feeds to second from both sides. Underhand from second, dart from short, before any turn is taught. The coaching point is that the feed is a throw to a spot, chest-high to the bag side, and the receiving player should never have to move her glove.
7. Drop step and do-or-die. Outfielders drop-step to the side of the ball before the coach's arm comes forward, five reads each. Then a ground ball with a runner scoring: charge, field on the glove side, throw through the cutoff. The coaching point: the first step is back on every ball until she knows it is short.
8. Front toss with counts. Coach calls the count before each toss. Two-strike swings are shorter, and the player says so out loud so you know she heard it. The coaching point is the approach changing with the count, the first thing a 12U hitter can control and the last thing most are taught.
9. Slap footwork off a tee. For left-handed hitters with speed, crossover and run-through off a tee until it is automatic, then front toss, then live with a defense reacting. The coaching point is that the footwork comes before the swing; a slapper who swings first and runs second is a weak left-handed hitter, not a slapper.
10. Spins at 20 feet. Pitchers, 15 to 20 reps of each pitch's spin at close distance, no radar gun. The coaching point is that movement is built in the spin, not in the arm speed, and 20 feet lets her feel the ball come off her fingers without trying to throw it through the catcher.

Common 12U mistakes

Most of these are a 10U habit that did not get updated.

• Running a 10U practice with a 12-inch ball. Skills only, no plays. A 12U practice with no live runner in it did not rehearse the thing that decides 12U games.
• Letting the pitchers and catchers warm up in the corner. Pitchers throw to each other, nobody counts, and the catcher never sees a ball in the dirt until the second inning on Saturday.
• Twelve players at one tee. A swing every two minutes each. Four stations of three is a swing every twenty seconds. The math has not changed since 10U.
• Teaching the third pitch before the second is reliable. A 12U pitcher who is working on a drop ball and cannot throw a change-up for a strike is working on the wrong thing.
• Timing catchers and posting the numbers. Pop times at 12U measure arm strength she does not have yet. Drill the transfer and the footwork, and keep the stopwatch in your bag until 14U.
• Ignoring the dropped third strike until it costs four runs. Every catcher needs the block-and-throw rep with two strikes and a batter running, and every batter needs to be told to run on a third strike in the dirt until the umpire says otherwise.
• Slapping every left-handed hitter, or none of them. Slapping is for the lefties with speed. A left-handed hitter without it is a left-handed hitter, and a right-handed hitter is never a slapper at 12U.
• Running first-and-third before bunt coverage is clean. First-and-third is a 14U play. At 12U it is fifteen minutes confusing eleven players so one of them can attempt a throw she will not make in a game.
• Changing the plan on the field. The plan goes on the fence before practice and does not move. A coach who rearranges the blocks mid-practice teaches the players that the plan is a suggestion, and they will treat their own work the same way.
• No plan for the days between practices. Covered below. The team practices twice a week; the players who look different in May did something on the other five.

The other five days

A 12U team practices once or twice a week. Call it three hours. Everything on this page is for those three hours; the other 165 belong to the players and their parents. The players who arrive in May looking like different athletes are doing something in those hours, and the honest version, which you find out in April, is that most of the roster is doing nothing.

The between-practice work at 12U is short and specific: the throwing progression against a wall or with a parent, the tee routine into a net, pitchers' wrist snaps and spins at close distance, catchers' receiving off a parent's front toss, slap footwork off a tee for the players who need it, and steal starts in the backyard. Thirty to forty-five minutes, by position, three days a week. It does not need 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, show the QR code on your phone at one practice, every athlete scans it, and they are on the plan before they leave the field. 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 before next season, 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; there is nothing to sign up for. The hub has the 90-minute structure, the blank template and the full drill index, and the tiers on either side of this one: 10U for the players coming up and 14U for where the 43-foot circle and the first-and-third are waiting. If you want the between-practice work assigned and tracked, that is what the free coach account is for.