| The Coach's Corner/ Is Winning How to Judge Whether You Have Done a Good Job Coaching? |
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Is winning how to judge whether you have done a good job coaching? A wise old coach once told me “ The first rule of how to be a good coach is get good players.” I will amend his statement by adding, particularly a couple of stud, hard throwing pitchers.' But what if for whatever reason, you find yourself with a team with no pitchers and very little talent. YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE, A LOT. Does that mean you didn't do a good job coaching? No, there are instances where, say, you take over a team that won the league last year and all 6 of the 12 year olds including the two stud pitchers moved up. Because you are the defending champ, you draft last and a lot. No matter how good that stud 10 year old is, he isn't going to lead you to glory. A 12 year old moving up from the minors may be big but there is a reason he was in the minors at 11. So you are going to be young and inexperienced. You are going to lose. Your job though is exactly the same as if you had a “stacked” team of studs, to motivate them to work to become the best that THEY can be. This is a good time to get them to understand that baseball is an individual competition played within a team concept. It is a team game only in the aspect that the final score reflects the amount of runs the teams scored. Each pitch is an individual competition between the pitcher and hitter. Your pitcher can win by throwing the best pitches he has for strikes. If the hitter crushes it or the fielder boots it, he has no control over what happens once it leaves his fingertips. Your hitter can “win” by having a “quality at bat”. (See the definition of a “quality at bat” in the ARCHIVED TIPS at www.tipsfromthecoach.com). If you use this system the batter can go 0-4 but have 3 “quality at bats” and have had a successful game. The fielders are not competing against the other team but with a ball bouncing along the ground or if you have poor pitching, rebounding off the fence. The fielder executes a play. Your players must understand that they must concern themselves only with those things over which THEY have control. They can't control how young or small they are. They can know where they need to be on each play and how to execute the play. Then it is just a matter of the amount of reps to master the necessary skills. It is hard to have fun when you are getting you butt kicked game after game. That is the challenge for the good coach with a bad team. You goal is to motivate them and inspire them to focus on those things they can control, working to improve their skills so that in the future they can expect to have success. If you can teach them these lessons and they improve and continue to play the game, you'll have been a successful coach. Another wise old coach once told me,” you can win or be popular”. You won't have another trophy but just think how much more popular you will be, until you whip them next time. The Coach Tipsfromthecoach.com
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Youth Sports Video
Gas Lites
Today in 1991, Houston QB
David Klingler sets NCAA
record with 6 touchdown
passes in the 2nd quarter
as the Cougars clobbered
Louisiana Tech 73-3.
