Day 81 (3/22/11) - First Tee Ball Practice

I recently signed Ryan up for tee ball.  He has been drafted by (i.e., assigned to) the Oakland A's.  He's excited that the team colors are green and yellow, which, as he reminded us, are the same colors as the Green Bay Packers.  Tee ball season runs from March 22 until June 10, with games every Saturday morning starting on April 16.  From now until April 1, players from every team practice together on Tuesday and Friday evenings.  Teams then break out into individual practices the week of April 4.

Tonight Ryan had his first academy tee ball practice.  The academy practice includes members from all 10 tee ball teams.  The combined team practice format includes various skill stations that teach throwing, catching, fielding, hitting, and base running.  The kids were broken into groups of 4 and rotated through each station, spending 5-10 minutes at each station.  The practice was scheduled from 6 to 7 pm, but by 7:15 the coaches realized they would be unable to get all the kids through all of the stations.  Since the temperature had dropped considerably by that time, they decided to break for the night and reconvene next week to finish rotating kids through the different drills.  (Practice for this Friday night was cancelled in advance due to predicted temperatures in the low 40s).  Despite being "shivering cold" as Ryan described it, he did a great job and was such a little trouper considering he has been suffering from horrible seasonal allergies and was feeling the effects of the Benadryl he took prior to practice.  His performance also noticeably improved as he went through each successive skill station.  He didn't get as much practice batting as he would have liked since those were the drills that his group didn't have time to complete.  However, we have tee ball stands at home that he can use to perfect his hitting technique, and he'll always be a grand-slam player in Mommy's completely unbiased opinion!