Every two years, youth baseball gets much harder as players progress through PONY or Little League. The field gets bigger, and with each up-sizing, the boys and girls are required to master new skills.

Overnight, it’s a longer dash to steal bases, a greater distance to hurl a strike from the pitcher’s mound to home plate, and a much farther flight for a line drive to reach the outfield.

The kids naturally develop as they move up the ranks and learn pitching, sliding and bunting, but the biannual expansion of the field is the change that throws them off their game. Hitters have to relearn timing to wait for the pitch and all players must work to adapt to other new demands.

This summer’s progression was special for my son, who started playing baseball at the tender age of 5. It’s his last: Now 12, he’s learning to adjust to playing on a regulation-size field, the same size field they use in high school, college and beyond.

Last weekend, as my son’s team took the field, I watched him grab his glove from the McKinley High School dugout — a real dugout with places to hang their helmets and bats — and I couldn’t help thinking back to the tiny folding stools in the grass that served as a dugout when he first started playing.

The base paths were just 50 feet long back then, marked out pregame in a grassy field by parents with tape measures — not the 90-foot dirt base paths he plays on now.

Back then, it was almost comical to watch the coach trying to wrangle the team on the field. There was always a kid who would forget to drop the bat before he ran to first base. The outfielders spent more time studying the ground for flowers to pick than picking up ground balls.

There were few game-­changing plays, and few plays without errors. Many of the kids were more focused on the post-game snack than the game itself.

But my boy has always loved the game, ever since he was 3 years old and would peer longingly through the park fence at the neighborhood Little League team. “They’re not that much bigger than I am, Mom. Go see if they’ll let me play,” he’d urge.

His first coach spent most of his first practice devising nicknames for everyone on the team “because nicknames are fun.” My son still uses that moniker — “B.K.” for his initials — seven years later.

Practices are more focused now; the games are more serious. Coaches and players alike track the team’s stats as the players learn to adjust to their new field.

But this is the last transition, and once the boys and girls acclimate, they will be ready to start the hardest progression of all — from kid baseball player to baseball player.

“She Speaks” is a weekly column by the women writers of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Reach Donica Kaneshiro at dkaneshiro@staradvertiser.com.