10 Things To Expect In Our 10U Season

It’s a tremendous privilege to coach a 10U Rep team for Bloordale Baseball in the 2026 season. Working with young athletes eager to learn the game is both exciting and rewarding. At the same time, it carries real responsibility for coaches and parents alike, since early experiences often shape how long players stay in the game—and how much joy they take from it.

With those things in mind, here are 10 thing you can look forward to in our upcoming 10U season.

1. Train for the big field
2. Accountability
3. Baseball must be fun!
4. Competitive development
5. Emphasis on arm care
6. Skill diversity
7. Age-Appropriate use of technology
8. Driveline Certified coaches
9. The best indoor training program
10. Failure-free environment

Training for the Big Field

If players are going to enjoy a long a productive youth baseball experience, they need to train with the big picture in mind. More than in any other sport, the baseball playing environment expands rapidly from 10U to the full 14U field. Our 2026 players are just 4 years away from playing on the same size bases and pitching distance that the pros use. “Just throw strikes” and “just make contact” don’t cut it with 90-foot bases and 60-foot pitching. Our training and development plan at 10U is designed with the big field in mind, so our players are fast enough and strong enough to thrive at 14U.

Accountability

Playing as part of a team is the best way to learn the life skill of being accountable to others. In age-appropriate ways, we encourage our team to play for each other, support each other, and be accountable to each other. That includes arriving on time, being prepared, encouraging teammates, and putting in the work to get better for your team.

Baseball IS Fun!

I mean … if baseball isn’t fun, why are we doing it? Yes, it’s full of life lessons and opportunities for maturing and bonding and all that important stuff. But it’s a game. The game must be fun, and players learn better when practices are fun. We talk a lot about development, growth, and learning through failure, but we also – coaches and parents – need to create an environment where 10-year-old players get to have fun along the way…

Competitive Development

… which leads us to the idea of competitive development. Yes, drills are important for learning some skills. But drills without purpose are just monotonous. Drills with an element of friendly competition, however, somehow appear a lot more like play with the added benefit of serious growth.

Emphasis On Arm Care

Arm injuries are an epidemic in baseball, and sadly most injuries in teens and adults can be traced back to overuse and poor training during the youth baseball years. As an older coach with a torn rotator cuff, and a college pitcher in his 20s who never had an arm injury, we know the value of arm care and we know it starts now. There are few things were more fanatical about than a proper warm-up and workload management. This is how you build strong, healthy arms that can play and pitch for years without pain!

Skill Diversity

The more versatile you are, the more valuable you will be to your team – and the better your chances for earning playing time when you get older. Our approach aims to balance the focus required to learn any baseball position well with the necessity of playing multiple positions. Everyone will learn to pitch, everyone will get training as a catcher, and all players will learn transferable infield and outfield skills.

Age-Appropriate Use of Technology

It’s 2025, and we have to accept that “eye-dar” is no longer a good enough measure of a player’s skills. At the same time, investing in a bunch of expensive high-tech options for 10-year-olds is wasteful of time and money. So much of baseball development at this age comes down to “move faster” and “get stronger”, so we’ll use tech like Blast bat sensors to track bat speed development and adapt each player’s training accordingly. Radar guns are used to establish a personal baseline and measure progress. Every kid these days knows all about levelling-up, and this is the kind of data they can appreciate!

Driveline-Certified Coaches

In addition to all the requisite provincial NCCP courses, over 20 years of coaching (Ryan), and experience as an Elite and US College player (Wes), our coaching staff will all be certified through the Driveline Youth Baseball Development program. Driveline is the leading edge baseball training organization in the world, and this training ensures that our staff is up to date on the latest best practices for coaching young athletes toward long playing careers.

The BEST Indoor Training Program

Without a doubt, the best team training facility and program available is The Baseball Zone. Our team will train weekly from January through April at the TBZ facility in tandem with their experienced coaches. Each week, we’ll spend an hour on a customized hitting program, and an hour on pitching or fielding. We’ll also spend another night each week working on small skills and Baseball IQ.

Failure-Free Environment

Baseball teaches us how to define success and failure in our lives. Real failure is found in not growing, not trying. Success is executing your plan with your full effort. And growth comes through pushing the limits of what you can do right now. We encourage our players to try more, reach farther, take risks. No one ever made a game-saving diving catch by playing it safe all the time! Work hard, give your best, get better, try again – that’s how we get better at everything in life! And that’s why the mantra for our team is “Next Pitch!”

Want to join us?

If this sounds like the kind of team and environment you want for your 2016 player, please join us for the 10U Bloordale Baseball tryouts on Sept 6th and 7th (you must register in advance, there is no tryout fee).