Coming back from #ABCA2026 and reflecting on youth throwing development. 1) Start with intent and make it fun. Little guys should learn to throw with intent before we obsess over “mechanics.” If you want to play catch, work on catching separately. Too many kids mimic the adult “push-throw” because the adult is just trying not to hurt them. Let kids run, move, and throw different implements at targets from different positions. My youngest loved throwing at a foam pad I’d toss in the air and trying to hit it while on the run. He’d play that game for an hour and never lose engagement. 2) Pitching is still throwing. Somehow we treat “pitching” like it’s different than throwing from SS. At young ages we need to get back to letting kids be athletes on the mound, not robots. 3) The game rewards walks too much at lower levels. We’ve built an environment where a walk is basically a cheat code. Maybe it’s time to restructure young kid pitch games away from the incentive of the walk. It would help both throwing and hitting development. Coaches lose patience with the kid who throws hard but struggles to throw strikes, and they reward the kid who throws darts. Long term, the kid who learns to throw with intent is the one who most often has the higher ceiling once the strike-throwing catches up. 4) Development isn’t “one cue fits all.” Changing a kid isn’t as simple as giving everyone the same checklist. Every kid moves different. You have to experiment and see what sticks. It’s more trial and error than bucketing kids into identical positions. Please get away from cues like “get on top of it,” “tuck your glove,” or the dreaded goal posts. The more you get kids to throw athletically, the more they’ll self-organize. If we coached less and let kids become athletic throwers, we’d probably see fewer arm injuries. A big part of the injury epidemic starts with over-coaching at the younger levels—then they get to HS and we’re unteaching years of bad habits. And that’s on us too as HS coaches, we need to invest time helping youth organizations and parent coaches so we’re building better throwers earlier not repairing them later. I loved the MLB arm care panel, but I do think how we teach young kids how to throw was an area that was missed.