PDFE #11

For this PDFE assignment, I observed my cousin’s softball practice for the league she plays in outside of school. I observed their practice on Thursday evening, November 18th. To collect the data I needed for determining what percent of time is spent receiving instruction, participating in an activity, waiting, and involved with management, I focused on my cousin who pitches for the team. At the start of practice, the coach talked shortly to the team before they spent a few minutes running a lap around the field and individually stretching. After the coach got the team all back together, he explained the activity they were about to do. I have never played softball, so I do not know what the drills the team did were called, but my cousin off to the side for a while practicing her pitch with the assistant coach and another player that I think was the back-up pitcher while the majority of the other team members were on the field with the coach practicing their reactions to different positions the ball could go to on the field after it is hit. The team was brought back together and talked to for another minute by the coach. The team then split up into two different groups…some stayed on the field and the others went to bat. My cousin was pitching for a while then sat for a couple minutes while the back-up pitcher was able to practice. After sitting there for a minute or two, it looked like the assistant coach came over to instruct my cousin on her pitching technique. This took up 42 minutes of practice and filled up the data sheet I was given in class, so I stopped there, but the practice still had another hour and 15 minutes left of it. During the 42 minutes of practice I observed for data collection, my cousin spent 20% of her time receiving instruction, 61% of her time participating in an activity, 11% of her time involved with management, and 8% of her time waiting. I feel like the percentages were fairly appropriate for the setting. I think that more time should have been spent doing activities like running warm-ups and stretching in the beginning of practice. Not much time was spent waiting during my observation, but it the data sheet would have been for a longer time, I think the percent of time waiting would have increased because my cousin practiced pitching first. The back-up pitcher got more time to practice and my cousin spent more time waiting after the 42 minutes of data collection. Other than spending more time on a warm-up which would increase the percent of time spent during activity, I would not make any changes to the practice. I think that 61% is a good amount of time spent participating in activity for softball because other time is needed for setting up equipment and instruction. The good thing about the practice is that the girls weren’t standing around waiting very much. I would consider the softball coach as being an effective leader because he managed the time during practice very well.