Coaching baseball is, without a doubt, one of the hardest things to do.
I have been lucky enough to coach a variety of sports - flag football, soccer, basketball, and baseball. By far - the most difficult sport to coach is baseball.
For starters, there are a few things about the sport working against you. First, there's just more equipment. With nearly every other sport, there isn't a bag full of equipment necessary to play the game. In baseball, however, you're contending with gloves, bats, helmets, and so on. As a coach, I have to bring catcher's equipment, hitting nets, tees, and so forth. Judging by the weakened suspension in the rear axle of my car - it is a lot of equipment. With other sports? You usually only need the shoes on your feet and a desire to play the game - the balls are supplied. The second thing working against you is idle time. There is just more idle time with baseball. In other sports, the players aren't as isolated from a play as they could be in baseball. To be sure, a good coach will cure as much of that idle time as possible, but there's no avoiding the idle time.
With all of that said, baseball is also my favorite sport to coach. There is more nuance and difficulty. The situational scenarios and awareness, alone, keeps a coach very busy. I've been fortunate enough to coach several teams - between t-ball and 12U - and have picked up the following lessons:
1) Keep it positive. Years from now, you will be able to look back on this experience and remember that you literally made the world a better place than you found it. Coaching enables you to improve the lives and character of the athletes you coach. What an opportunity - use it wisely.
2) Keep it fresh. If you have used the same drill more than twice, you need to consider why. Was the first time not successful? Or was it successful and you want to go back to the well?
3) Maintain boundaries. Even though I am a "player's coach," I still struggle with the fact that there must be a necessary boundary between player and coach. Most notably, my desire to be a player's coach can come at the expense of compliance. Throughout the season, I may appear to be acting inconsistently when I am really trying to push and pull the levers of compliance (i.e., I may draw harsher boundaries as I notice compliance decrease). Setting expectations and boundaries up front (i.e., what are we here to do, what should it look like, etc)
4) Preach effort. There is only so much we can control. Effort is absolutely one of them. The team parents likely get annoyed with me (ok, very annoyed), but I ask my team to run/sprint two final times to end the game. We go foul pole to foul pole. Invariably, we do it twice. The first, I give no instruction and it yields roughly 50-60% effort. On the second time, I reinforce why they are here and how hard they are willing to work to be here. Well, I get close to 80-90% effort at that point. Needless to say, without effort
5) Model a growth mindset. The joy of baseball is that you are surrounded by failure - and no, not the "bad" type of failure. The sort of failure that is embedded in the game (i.e., even a good pitcher will get beat up now and again or your best hitter may strike out 3 times). Use that failure to teach. Use that failure to model how we "embrace the suck" and use adversity to make us stronger. Failure is a teacher - let it teach.
6) Let the experience teach you. It's pretty likely that you're doing this as a volunteer (in which case, thank you for leaving the world in a better place than you found it a few weeks ago). It's also pretty likely you're trying to figure out how to balance your job, family, and coaching demands (in which case, you're probably sacrificing something and it may be best to schedule a date with the wife or kids). But all that said - take what you can from the experience of coaching. Coaching young children will force you to be precise with your communication - you must be clear about what you expect and what you want them to do. There is no better teacher for communication than coaching.
My final lesson - re-think what "having fun" means. Particularly with my young teams, I would preach that we're here to have fun (and worry less about the scoreboard). In many ways, that mantra was perfectly fine, but the problem is that losing all the time isn't fun. We weren't growing as much as we needed to grow - we were too focused on the idea of fun that we forgot that we need to hunker down and improve - once we do, we will "have fun" with that feeling of accomplishment. It's truly a tricky tightrope to walk, but one worth walking.
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