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Sometimes older more experienced coaches look down on youth baseball coaches.
They are wrong. It is much more challenging to coach youngsters. When coaching high school and 18U players, you pretty much try to not screw them up it is much harder to coach kids than prospect big boys. The big boys pretty much know how to play. They know how to swing a bat. Only if they are slumping and they ask, do you ever offer swing mechanics advice. In most instances, they know if they made a mistake. You just need to make sure they understand what they did and what to do about it. The vast majority of the time, you are dealing with mental approach problems.
With kids, it is axiomatic that, that which you don't teach them they won't know. Think about it. You are dealing with a vacuum. You must teach them quality swing mechanics, drills to be used in a home training program to engrain those mechanics into their muscle memory. Plate discipline. How to deal with failure. Fielding mechanics and drills to do in a home training program and what and where to throw it and how to deal with the failure. Pitching mechanics and strategy and a home training program to ingrain those mechanics into a quality delivery and how to deal with failure. Boy, you have your hands full. Never coach down. Challenge them to learn to play beyond what most people think someone their age can accomplish. You are likely to be teaching entirely different levels of skills to members of the same team. On the one hand, you are teaching everything to the newbie, how to and where to throw, how to swing it, and base running but with a "stud" who has been playing a few years, you may be teaching very advanced strategies and disciplines.
The single biggest flaw I encounter in "prospect" player's game is base running skills. Some controlling 1B coach has made them think their middle name is "BACK". They never learn "instincts" and run station to station.
With my BASEBALL SKILLS AND DRILLS series and Tips From The Coach video series, you will have all the knowledge necessary to teach your kids to execute all the skills of the game. The challenge is to learn to communicate with "kids" and get them to understand and learn. When they become big boys you must learn a different way of coaching. Pick your spots. Ask questions. " Do you know what you did wrong?" Explain it to me?" " Good, don't do that again.”
Never stop learning. It matters not how much baseball you know, what matters is that you
can find some way to communicate to that one individual with whom you are working. You must know many different ways to "skin a cat", for what clicks with Bobby may mean nothing to Tommy.
A good Youth Baseball coach works hard. There is so much to teach. There is so much to learn. My hat is off to all of you. The Coach tipsfromthecoach.com SEE ARCHIVES
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