14U Softball Practice Plan: Three Full Practices + Drills

This is the complete 14U softball practice plan: three practices you can run this week, a pitcher and catcher block built for the 43-foot circle, the ten drills that matter at this age, and the mistakes that cost 14U teams close games. 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, 12U, high school and indoor.

It is written for fastpitch, and for the tier where the rules stop changing. The ball, the bases, the dropped third strike and the stealing rules are the same as 12U. What moves is the circle, from 40 feet to 43, where it stays through high school and college. Almost everything different about a 14U practice follows from those three feet and from how much a thirteen-year-old can now be asked to own.

Jump to:

• What changes at 14U
• What a 14U player can and cannot do yet
• The 90-minute 14U practice plan · The 75-minute short-night plan · The pre-game or light-day plan
• Pitchers and catchers at 14U
• The drills that matter at 14U
• Common 14U mistakes · The other five days

What changes at 14U

12U was the jump in rules. 14U is the jump in speed. The rule sheet moves one number, the pitching distance, and everything else in the table is unchanged from 12U. But the pitchers are two years stronger and the extra three feet gives a pitch room to move, so the hitters' timing and the catchers' receiving move with the circle. First-and-third, the play you skipped at 12U, now decides the close games. Bunting and the slap game become situational weapons. The pitcher's week becomes a conversation with parents. And the athlete owns more of it: she runs a station from a card, keeps her own count, and either does the work between practices or does not.

These are the common USA Softball Junior Olympic fastpitch rules for the 14-under division. Other sanctioning bodies run 14U at the same three numbers but differ on time limits, run rules, courtesy runners, re-entry and equipment, so check the rule sheet for the league you actually play in before you spend a station on a rule your umpires will not call.

Where it goes next. Half of a 14U roster is trying out for a high school team in the spring. High school softball uses NFHS rules, and the six lines in the table are the same there: 12-inch ball, 43-foot circle, 60-foot bases, dropped third strike in play, runners leave on release, stealing open including home. Nothing learned at 14U has to be unlearned in March. What NFHS writes differently is the game around those rules: seven-inning games, a run-ahead rule adopted by the state association, its own courtesy-runner and re-entry language, and equipment lines set separately from USA Softball's. This page does not state those; get them from your state association's sheet.

What a 14U player can and cannot do yet

What she can do. Run any station on this page from an index card and coach the player next to her through it. Hold a plan across a week without a parent standing there. Throw across the infield with something on it, so the pivot at second and the throw from the hole are real plays. Hit off her own pitchers at 43 feet. Read a pitcher's release and make the steal decision herself. Get a sacrifice down on the first pitch and, if she is a slapper, slap live against a charging corner. Learn a play from a whiteboard and run three versions of it.

What she cannot do yet. Hit late movement from a pitcher who can locate two pitches; most 14U hitters are a year away, which is why the two-strike approach gets its own round on the tee. Make the first-and-third decision at game speed until she has run it in the hundreds. Throw out a good runner every time; the arm is arriving, so the stopwatch comes out, but it stays hers. Add up her own workload across two teams and a lesson. Separate a bad Saturday from a bad season, which is something a coach says out loud at the close.

The spread. A 14U roster spans a thirteen-year-old in her first season at 43 feet and a fourteen-year-old with a high school jersey in her bag, so every station below has a harder version, usually the same drill with a live runner.

The 90-minute 14U practice plan

The six blocks from the hub, filled in for 14U. Two coaches assumed. The coach cue is the sentence that starts each block; by April the station leader should be saying it for you.

If you are the only adult. Drop to three stations in each block and make one self-run; at 14U the tee routine, short hops off a fence and the throwing progression all run from a card with a player leading them. Take the first four minutes of the pitcher and catcher station yourself, because the bullpen still needs an adult who knows what a strike at 43 feet looks like. If you have three, add a fourth defensive station: bunt defense with a rotation, live bunter and live runner, until it happens without a call.

Pre-season. With the field yours in February and no games in the week, run this plan at 120 minutes: a fourth defensive station, a 20-minute situational block, and live hitting against every pitcher on the staff. If your players ran the off-season softball training plan over the winter, its Sharpen block in weeks 10 to 12 hands straight into this: arms already stretched to 90 feet, a tee routine they can run alone, and a first bullpen at 43 feet on day one instead of week three.

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. Throwing and the pitcher and catcher station stay whole, because a player cannot make those up alone; the hitting block drops to three stations and the situational block runs one side of first-and-third instead of both.

Live hitting is the block that goes when time is short, not the tee. At 14U that costs more than at 12U, because live at 43 feet is where timing gets built, so a short-night week needs a scrimmage in the weekend.

The pre-game or light-day plan

The day before a game, nothing new gets taught. Arms are kept short, the pitcher starting tomorrow throws enough to find 43 feet 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 and the weekend's pitching order 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. On a tournament weekend with four games in two days, this is the whole practice on Friday and there is no Thursday.

Pitchers and catchers at 14U

At 12U this was the station most teams skipped. At 14U you cannot, because the 43-foot circle is the whole reason the tier exists. The block is eight minutes inside the defensive block, and the table is what the eight minutes hold. Everything 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.

The week at 14U is bigger than it was: a tournament with four to six games, a school team in the spring, and a weekly lesson with a pitching coach who is not you. Nobody adds that up unless somebody decides to. Have the conversation with her parents in the pre-season, not in June: what the lesson throws, what the school team throws, and what you will do when the total is too high, which is fewer pitches for you, not a shorter lesson for them. If a pitcher reports arm pain, the answer is fewer throws and a conversation with her parents, not a modified progression.

Three pitches at 14U, in order: a fastball she can put on both sides of the plate, a change-up with the same arm speed, and a third pitch, usually a drop or a rise, that starts in the spin station and earns its way into the last ten pitches of the bullpen on the days the first two were there. Most 14U pitchers arrive with two and leave with three; the ones who arrive with none located spend the season on the first, and a fastball on both sides at 43 feet gets outs. Nothing in this block measures how hard she throws.

For catchers, the order is receiving, then blocking, then throwing, the same as 12U. The new job is calling the game: the catcher calls the bullpen so she has thrown every sequence in the pitcher's book before she calls it with a runner on third. The stopwatch comes out of your bag this year and goes into hers: five throw-downs a practice, timed, written in her notebook, never posted.

The drills that matter at 14U

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. First and third. Three variations each way. Defense: throw through with the shortstop cutting if the runner at third breaks; cut in front of the bag and come home; fake to second, throw to third. Offense: go on release, the delayed steal, stop halfway to draw the throw. The coaching point: the defense picks its call before the pitch, because a first-and-third decided after the runner goes is already lost.
2. Double-play feeds. The hub's drill with the pivot added. Underhand from second, dart from short, then the receiver turns and throws to first with a live runner coming. The coaching point: the pivot foot is on the bag before the feed arrives, and the throw goes over the runner, not through her.
3. Cuts and relays. Ball in the gap, the relay lined up before the catch, the trail infielder calling the throw, a runner scoring from first so the decision is real. The coaching point: the relay is turned glove-side before the ball arrives.
4. Communication fly balls. Two outfielders, one ball hit between them, the call made early and loud, the other player pulling off to back up. The coaching point: the priority is on the whiteboard before practice, so nobody decides it in the air.
5. Bunt coverage. The 14U version adds the rotation: third baseman charges, shortstop covers third, second baseman covers first. The coaching point: the rotation starts on the bunt attempt, not the bunt.
6. Live off your own pitcher. Live at-bats at 43 feet against a pitcher from your staff, catcher in gear, every pitch in her book allowed. The coaching point: the hitter's load starts earlier than it did at 40 feet, and this is the only place she finds out by how much.
7. Tee routine with a two-strike round. The hub's five stations, then a sixth round with two strikes: shorter swing, ball driven the other way. The coaching point: the two-strike swing is a different swing practiced separately, not the normal swing done more carefully.
8. Slap footwork. Off a tee, then front toss, then live with a first baseman charging. The coaching point is still footwork before the swing, and now the read: where the corners are playing decides slap, drag or hard swing.
9. Spins at close distance. Pitchers, 10 to 15 reps of each pitch's spin at 20 feet, including the third pitch she is building. The coaching point: movement is built here, and the bullpen is where she finds out whether it survives 43 feet.
10. Bullpen at the age's distance. 43 feet, 50 to 60 pitches, location called by the catcher before every pitch and named by the pitcher after it. The coaching point: the third pitch is earned each day by the first two, and the pitcher writes the count down before she leaves.

Common 14U mistakes

Most of these are a 12U practice that moved three feet and did not notice.

• Running a 12U practice at 43 feet. Same station names, not the same reps. No live at-bats at 43 feet and no live runner in the defensive block is a 12U practice with older players.
• Treating the circle move as the pitcher's problem. The hitters and catchers moved too. A pitcher who found 43 feet in March in front of hitters still loading late in May is half the work.
• Running first-and-third once in March. It is the situational block most weeks until the players call the defense themselves.
• Posting the numbers. Radar readings and pop times measure things a fourteen-year-old will chase at the cost of the mechanics that produce them. The stopwatch is hers.
• Nobody adding up the second team. She throws for you on the weekend, for the school on Tuesday and for her pitching coach on Wednesday, and each of the three assumes the other two are counting.
• Fourteen players at one live station. An at-bat every twelve minutes each. Four hitting stations with live as one of them is an at-bat every six minutes and fifty quality swings between.
• Forgetting the catcher calls the game. If she has never called a bullpen, the first sequence she calls alone is in the fourth inning on Saturday with a runner on third.
• No plan for the days between practices. Covered below. At 14U the players own those days, and most of them, if nobody asks, do nothing with them.

The other five days

A 14U team practices twice a week. Call it three hours. Everything on this page is for those three hours; the other 165 belong to the players, and at 14U that means something it did not at 10U, when a parent ran the driveway session. At 14U the athlete either does the work or does not, she is old enough to be asked directly, and the players who look different in June are the ones who did.

The between-practice work at 14U is short and specific: the throwing progression with a partner or into a wall, the tee routine with a two-strike round into a net, pitchers' spins and one short bullpen a week with a catcher, catchers' receiving and blocking, slap and bunt footwork. Thirty to forty-five minutes, by position, three days a week. It does not need a field and, for the first time, it does not need a parent.

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. At 14U most of the roster is 13 or older, so the athlete runs her own sessions on her own account and a parent can be linked to see her work; a player still 12 goes through the parent 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 into a sentence said to the players: "Eleven of fourteen 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 tryouts, the off-season softball training plan is the 12-week version of the same idea, with a 14U tier.

Print it

Everything above is the plan. Print the page or send the link to your assistant coaches and, at this age, to the players; there is nothing to sign up for. The hub has the 90-minute structure, the blank template and the drill index, and the tiers on either side of this one: the 12U softball practice plan for the players coming up to 43 feet, and the high school softball practice plan, where twenty-one outs and a five-day week are waiting. If you want the between-practice work assigned and tracked, that is what the free coach account is for.