Keep in mind I’m making these observations based on small sample sizes. Obviously, I have one daughter. The lass’ coach pitch softball team has 11 girls on it. I have one son, who played coach pitch baseball for 1 year. His teams had 10 or so players on them.
All of that, clearly, adds up to me being an expert.
For one, the girls seem to have slightly better attention spans than the boys did at a similar age. I make this observation based on how well the kids paid attention during drills and how long we tried to keep practices. I remember trying to keep practices to 45 minutes or so with the boys. The girls have gone through 2 1-hour practice sessions so far, and haven’t been any the worse for wear.
I generally only have to ask once with girls. With boys, sometimes it seemed like I needed a tape recorder set on an infinite loop to serve as my voice.
Physically, the boys have a wider spread in abilities. There were some very talented kids who could throw, catch and hit well. The girls all seem to be bunched in a tighter band ability wise- the standouts are not that much better than the average. Also, with boys the ones that could do one thing well tended to do everything well. By which I’m referring to throwing, catching and hitting. With girls, the same pattern doesn’t seem to exist. There are a few who throw well, but they won’t necessarily hit the ball as well as they throw.
For now, the girls don’t have as many questions about how to play the game. When we started explaining the games to the boys, they started asking questions with wild scenarios. We basically had to shut them down. The girls are, for now, content to take the info we give them and work with that.
Finally, overall ability wise, I’d say the average girl is about equal to the average boy. I was somewhat surprised by this because I figured throwing and hitting would both tilt towards the boys. But at the ages we’re talking about, the average strength and muscle coordination isn’t so much greater for boys that they are clearly superior. There were no infield outs from third base with the boys (unless they happened to tag 3rd with a force out), and I’m guessing it will be the same for the girls.
As far as catching goes, it appears to be a dead heat. Apparently, at the ages of 6 and 7, the average kid cannot catch a fly ball to save their life.