When it comes to coaching, Tim Maloney spends most of his time helping the Northeast Lauderdale baseball team.

Now that his daughter, Elaine, is 5, though, he often takes the time to help teach her the sport of softball, whether it’s in his backyard or as a volunteer with the Shutterbugs 6-and-under team.

Baseball might be his background, but Maloney said he enjoys watching his daughter learn softball. The sport isn’t totally foreign to him — he coached the Northeast Lauderdale softball team two years ago — and Saturday afternoon, he was on hand as the Shutterbugs played a pair of games in the State Games of Mississippi’s softball tournament at Northeast Park.

“It’s her first year playing,” Maloney said. “She enjoys it. She asks me all the time to practice hitting, and the coach in me wants to be out there anyway. Now that baseball is over (at Northeast Lauderdale), it’s easier to do that.”

Since he’s just breaking her into the sport, Maloney said he has to sometimes show a lot of patience with Elaine.

“It’s very interesting,” he said. “Now I understand why my dad would get frustrated when I wouldn’t listen. But it’s fun to see her have the same passion I had for a sport.”

Elaine insisted she wasn’t too tired after Saturday’s doubleheader, and there was no way she was taking a nap when she got home.

“I go to sleep early,” Elaine explained.

Hitting and catching the ball with her glove are Elaine’s two favorite things about softball, she said, and she especially enjoys playing first base, where teammates will throw her the ball in order to get a force out.

“But if the other team makes it to first base, they don’t throw it to me, they throw it to Coach,” Elaine said, referring to the sport’s timeout rule once a runner reaches the bag.

Maloney said the biggest challenge for first-time players is directing their glove to make a catch.

“Hand-eye coordination is a struggle for most kids in this group,” Maloney said. 

Brittany Pounders, who coaches the Shutterbugs, said the basic fundamentals of the sport, like fielding, hitting and knowing where to go with the ball, are usually new concepts for girls on the 6U teams, since it’s often their first time ever playing softball.

“My girl is 3, so she wasn’t exposed to softball at all before this,” Pounders said. “Mainly the thing we try to teach them is to stay focused and try to get out instead of just running anywhere.”

Watching a 6U game might look like organized chaos at times, but Pounders said the girls are actually responsive to her and her assistants’ coaching points.

“Our first practice was rough,” Pounders admitted. “We had three practices before games, and in the first game it actually looked like they paid attention, so it’s not too bad. Mainly it’s just us getting to know each other.”