Posted by: Matt (coachmatt@verizon.net) on Thu May 20 04:38:12 2004

I had the same problem with my 11 yr old. We managed to break it pretty quickly once we started working at it. I am not as well versed on the swing with many of the people on this board but here is what I found worked. We started by creating 3 simple to remember steps in the swing process. 1) STEP when the pitch is about to be release by the pitcher, 2) TURN initiate the inside turn by the back leg on the ball of the foot (the hands remain at shoulder height and the upper body stays back), 3) SWING the bat. Regarding the casting - how you do #3 is important. We were able to very quickly break the cast habit by putting him on the Griffey tee which has a tube shaped as a "U" for the path of the bat to travel when it begins its movement toward the pitcher. You can also put a small soccer or nerf ball resting between his shoulder and the bat and tell him to swing such that the ball will fall on the plate when he swings. This way, the bat is not dropping at initiation of the swing thus causing a big loop and the cast. Once he gets the feel down, keep doing on the tee. It will take a little while to get it into use against live pitching. One other thing that I noticed and needed to correct once we started doing this. There was tendency not to finish the swing after contact. Mke sure you drive that home as part of the drill - finish the swing. We put partially deflated soccer balls on the tee to help with this. Hope this helps.