Teaching the Game: Hitting Skills and Drills
by Marc Rardin

About this Course

In this youth baseball coaching course Iowa Western Head Coach Marc Rardin shares more than 20 drills designed to teach the fundamentals of a good swing. Coach Rardin's three keys to good hitting are balance, timing and direction. His presentation includes multiple skill progressions that integrate hitting off a tee and soft toss.

Coach Rardin emphasizes hitting the ball with your hands, not the barrel of the bat. If the hands are in the correct position, the barrel will follow!In the "Two-Two-Two Drill," players eased into correct swing fundamentals by progressing through phases that train them to hit the ball with their weight on their front foot. Players begin with two repetitions of the "Back Knee Through Tee Drill" and then use the same technique with two soft tosses and finally the regular swing with two soft tosses. Transferring energy from the back foot to the front foot in the swing makes the hitter more powerful and consistent.

Though these drills were developed for youth players, they can also be used at the collegiate level to improve performance in more accomplished athletes, as proven by Iowa Western's 2014 NJCAA National Championship. Let Coach Rardin help you train your youth hitters and assist them in building a reliable swing that puts more balls in play.

Coach Credentials

Marc Rardin Head Coach of Iowa Reivers Baseball Follow

During Marc Rardins 13 seasons as the Head Baseball Coach at Iowa Western Community College, his teams have rewritten the record books in every facet of the program and made junior college baseball history by winning the Junior College World Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014. Rardin's Reivers are the first Northern District representative to ever win the Junior College World Series title. All in all, in 13 seasons at Iowa Western Rardin’s Reivers have participated in 9 Junior College World Series, and have won 11 consecutive Regional Titles, and 9 Northern District Titles. That’s a total of 23 Post Season Titles, more than any other Division I junior college program in the country in the past 13 years alone.

Rardin has also been recognized by the National Junior College Athletic Association and the Baseball Coaches Association and has twice (2008 & 2010) been assistant coach on the NJCAA USA National Teams. This past summer Coach Rardin was the Head Coach of the USA Junior College Team that participated in the 80th year of the NBC Tournament in Wichita, KS. After being together as a team for only 21days the NJCAA team finished the tournament with a 3rd Place finish. In June, Coach Rardin also has been invited to Cary, North Carolina and the official training base for USA Baseball Organization. Rardin has twice (2014,15) managed one of the teams and helped with organization, practices and evaluations with the ages 18 & under tryouts for Tournament of Stars.

This course has no reviews