Coaching Made Easier

Quick Tips for Your Draft

The very first step in building a strong team is assembling the best talent from the pool of players that you have to choose from.  The rules and procedures as to the how the drafts are conducted vary from league to league so these tips will be as universal as I can make them.  All of these suggestions are logical but it’s good to review prior to the start of the draft.  Youth coaches sometimes get way too wrapped up in the moment and, believe it or not, pressure builds and wrong choices are made.  Wrong choices will be with you all season.

With this in mind here are some general tips that will help you in drafting the right players:

Æ  Attend the evaluations and keep separate notes on players that “”look” good.

Æ  If allowed, bring your assistant coach(es) with you to the draft process.

Æ  Pitchers need to be your first priority and most of them will go in the first few rounds of the draft so make sure you have a minimum of two pitchers – three is ideal.

Æ  Players with older brothers are “generally” a good pick as they’ve, most likely, been playing ball with their older siblings and their skills may beyond their age.

Æ  If you know the parents of the player and know that they will be supportive in your efforts – they will be good additions to your roster.

Æ  If allowed during your pre-draft review, call your son and ask him about the players athletic prowess – kids know who the athletes are.

Æ  At the younger ages, a good athlete in basketball, for instance, will generally equal a good athlete in baseball so if you know the player from another sport, use that in your determination.

Æ  If you see a strong player way down the list – pick them early as some players just do not do well on the first spring outing for the try-outs.

Æ  If your league is multiple ages, as a rule of thumb the older player will be a better pick that the younger ones – there will be exceptions but generally true.

Æ  Be careful in looking at the numbers as an extremely skilled hitter may do very poorly in fielding and throwing so look for the well balanced player,

Once you get this process behind you, you can begin to plan for that all important first (see the blog dated September 5, 2008 “Meet the Parents….Your First Parents Meeting).  With a little luck and following a few of these tips you have the makings of a strong team – roll up your sleeves, get out to the field and have a successful season.  Play Ball!!!!!

Our Minds Turn to Baseball.........

 
 It’s hard to think of baseball as half the country is digging out of record breaking snow but football is over and spring training is right around the corner.  On those cold weekends that you’re snowed in why not start to gather your tools for the upcoming coaching season…….or you could watch bowling on ABC Sports.

Usually by the end of a season, you’re tired and weary so your coaching book and all the gear gets thrown in the corner of your basement or garage and there it sat.  It is also tired, weary and covered in dust.  Take an inventory of your tools:

• Do you have enough Five Part Line-up cards left – if not get them at your local sporting goods store.
• Get your clip board for your offensive line-up cleaned up and ready to add your new team roster.
• Check the condition and clean your Erasable White Board for your defense – if you’ve been through multiple seasons it may be time to get a new one.
• Check out the various forms you used last year to see if they need to be edited.
• Prepare an agenda for your first parents meeting.
• Review all of your equipment.

Chapter 3 of my book will be beneficial as you prepare for the spring.  Doing these things won’t help get the snow off your driveway but it sure will help your state of mind.

Coaching Made Easier Tops Amazon's Chart

It’s time to celebrate!!  This week Coaching Made Easier hit #1 in its category.  Thanks to all of you who helped make that possible.  It was exciting for me to see my book ahead of Cal Ripkin Jr’s coaching book.  Tell your coaching friends to check it out and thanks again for your support.

What It’s All About…..

One of the fantastic side benefits of your days as a coach is the relationships that are established in two ways.  First and most important is your impact on the lives of your players.  Like it or not, you ARE a role model for these young men – they look up to you and watch your every move.  I used to have parents that would come to me on the sly and ask if I could “encourage” little Johnny to do this or that.  It seems that he would listen to me more so than his mom or dad.  They also pay close attention to your “discussions” with umpires.  Be aware of the little eyes that are watching you (see my December 2008 post).

In addition to the relationships that are established with your players you will also find that great friends are made with the parents of your players.  My wife and I still socialize with several couples that we met at the ball field over the years.

These relationships became evident recently when I had an opportunity to do a book signing at a local Barnes & Nobles.  The place was packed with parents and former players lined up to have me sign a copy of their book.    One dad told me that his son had cancelled a rather important date to be at my signing.  Others drove home for the weekend from their colleges.  It was extremely gratifying to see them and reminisce about the good ole days of the “Birds”.

Be aware of the impact you are having on young lives and be cognizant of the fact that you are possibly making some life-long friends with their parents.  Treasure the experience – it goes by quickly.

Back to the Basics

 

As fall baseball season is upon us, you should use this time to bone up on your coaching skills.  Try things in the fall that you can refine and pull out in the spring.  Most leagues view fall ball as instructional time and you, as a coach, should view it in the same light.

One of my favorite coaches is John Wooden, head coach of the UCLA basketball team from 1964 – 1975.  During that time he fielded one strong team after another and won an unprecedented 10 NCAA titles in his 12 years.  He conducted every practice the same whether he was preparing for the NCAA championship game or a warm-up game with a lesser opponent.  He hammered his teams on basics.  One of my favorite stories about him is what he put his players through on their very first practice each year.  He would spend an entire practice on teaching his players (most were blue chip recruits) on the proper way to lace up their sneakers, put their shoes on, and tie them.  This was so juvenile but it illustrates how he focused on the details of the game.

At all of your practices, and especially in the fall, teach and re-teach the fundamentals:  bunting, sliding, base running, and, yes, even lacing your cleats properly.  If it was good enough for a 10-time NCAA basketball champion, it’s good enough for us.

It's All in the Numbers....

Young baseball players just like the professionals have hitting streaks and slumps.  Like Yogi Berra once said, “I ain’t in a slump, I just ain’t hittin’”.  One of the things I noticed as I coached my teams was that often the batting line-ups of our competitors were same every time I played them during the season.  Three meetings during the season and I would see the same line-up each game.  That always indicated to me that the coach was not paying attention to the details of the game.  He didn’t do something as basic as knowing how your players were performing – it was an indication of laziness.

Players at all levels are streaky and the only way you can be aware of how hot or cold your hitters are is by tracking the stats and using those stats to set you line-up.  There are several options to accomplish this from the pencil-paper calculator to fairly sophisticated computer programs that allow you to report to your players how they are doing.  I prefer the computerized approach.  Nothing works, of course, if you do not have a dedicated score keeper that is able to accurately communicate to you through his score pad how the players are doing at the plate.  I highly recommend a program that handles various sports.  I have used both their baseball and football products and they are excellent.  The company is called TurboStats and you can find them via the link here on my blog.  They offer a free downloadable version that you can use for several games before you have to buy it.  This trial period gives you the ability to see if it suits your needs.

Another benefit of reporting your stats to your players is that they learn what the various stats mean and they can be used to motivate the players to improve their batting averages.  I constantly adjusted my line-ups for each game based on the batting averages, on-base percentages and certain power ratings.  I started this practice when my players were eight years old.

Correcting vs Humiliating

With any human characteristic, there is a range – in coaching you find various styles in dealing with the players.  There’s the “old-school” gruff, yelling type at one end of the spectrum and the politically correct, “everyone is doing great and we don’t need to grade kids” at the other end.

I tried to stay comfortably in the middle:  correcting when necessary and praising when deserved.  If at all possible I tried to correct privately (unless the entire team screwed up) and praise publicly.  In my observation of fellow coaches it always seemed to me that the abrasive, in-your-face coach may have gotten the corrected action he desired but it was obvious that his teams did not seem to be enjoying the experience.

Depending on their age, players can be emotionally fragile.  When I pulled players aside and discussed their error or mistake eye to eye in a civil tone they were less likely to get upset and they took my instruction to heart.  As I said – I tended to ride the middle ground but my voice needed to be raised from time to time depending upon how often I had to tell the player the same thing.  When you use a raised voice all the time it becomes the little boy who cried wolf and doesn’t get any different.

No one appreciates public humiliation and it is a sure way to get parents on your back.  That aside, it’s not good for team morale and it creates an atmosphere of fear and defensiveness.  Fun should be the name of the game.  That, along with your obligation to teach the game, requires a blend of good coach/bad coach.  Just make sure that the good coach is in public and the bad (correcting) coach is in private.

Tool to Help Your Record Keeping

Coaching a group of young people in today’s political correct world is challenging to say the least.  Depending upon local league rules you will most likely be saddled with keeping track of innings played.  Especially in recreational leagues, it is important for players to get their allotted time on the field.  Again, depending upon league rules, you could be forced to forfeit a game if the rules are not followed properly.  As a coach you need to be diligent with your record keeping.  Pitching is another beast whereby you need to track the number of pitches – this is a relatively new rule but is one I applaud but another challenge for the strategy of the volunteer coach.

You cannot rely on your memory.  I have developed a simple printable form that is found on the CDR that comes with my book.  The use of it is discussed in chapter 3.  Even with no league rules, it is to your best interest to keep accurate records on the play time that each player gets.  There were a few times during my coaching days that the records I kept came in handy when discussing Little Johnny with his parents.  This form automatically populates the player names from the master roster sheet in the spreadsheet.  This form along with your offensive batting line-up will give you a historical record of your game and could help fill in some missing pieces in the communication between your scorekeeper and you as you put your game stats into the computer.

Please see the form example below:

If you have any specific question please feel free to email me at info@CoachingMadeEasiier.net .

 

Finish the Season Strong

Having coached youth baseball for eleven years and having been a head-coach for nine of those years I can totally relate to what I called the “June Blues”.  You’ve had about as much of Little Johnny as you can handle and his mom is about to drive you over-the-top.  Hang in there – the end of the year tournament is nearing and with it comes the end of the season.

Fight the tendency to allow your weariness and frustrations to cloud the good times that you’ve enjoyed with your team.  If you have had a stellar, championship type year – rejoice and celebrate the victory.  If your season was other than stellar find reasons to celebrate.  Whatever you do don’t give up on your team – do not let those little guys or gals down.  Fight on and finish strong.

Practice still counts and matters.  Other coaches getting the “June Blues” will most likely lessen their attention to the details.  By you remaining diligent and sticking with your practice regiment and discipline your team, despite it’s showing during the regular season, may have a chance to surprise some teams that performed better during the season.  Inevitably there is team seated low in the tournament rankings that peaks during the end-of-season tourney and surprises teams.  It could be your chance to rally your team and have them take home a tourney championship.

Our teams faired fairly well during the season but I can recall several times when we were unset by a lower seated team.  If you are coming off of a strong season you need to coach your teams to the end and if you detect a loss of focus have some team meetings.

The other thing that often happens at the end of the season is that family vacations can change the complexion of teams.  A key player missing from the lineup as a result of a visit to gram’s house can put a huge wrinkle into a team’s strength.  As I’ve discussed in previous blogs and in my book you need to communicate early regarding when the season is over and urge parents not to schedule vacations until after the very end of the season.  Start this discussion at your very first meeting with your parents (see “Meet the Parents” blog from September 2008) and repeat it often.  If you’ve done a good job with this you may not find yourself in a tough situation.  That said, it happens and it happens more often to coaches who didn’t stress this with his players’ parents.

Burn-out, loss of focus, injuries and vacations can all come to play as the season winds down and the strength of teams can change.  Avoid those items that you can avoid and encourage your players, their parents and your assistant coaches to hang in there and make the absolute best of your season regardless of your win/loss record.

Mike Huckabee the Catcher

  I’m going to digress a bit from my normal blogs about coaching and share a true life experience that I hear of over the weekend.  It’s about little league baseball, so bear with me on this.  One of the companies that my consulting firm is working with is called Christian Values Network (www.cvn.org) – it’s an affinity marketing portal that provides funds to churches and Christian non-profits.  CVN just signed Mike Huckabee as a spokesperson and I had the privilege and the honor of spending some time with Governor Huckabee over this past weekend.

I was also able to hear him speak several times in various venues:  from a small country church to a convocation with over 10,000 college students attending.  His messages were all different and relevant to each of his audiences.  In the sermon at the rural church, the former Baptist pastor preached a lesson on Roman’s 8:25 – “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. “  One of the illustrations that he used was regarding his little league baseball playing days – finally Rod, a connection to baseball – thanks for hanging with me.  Mike was playing catcher and did not follow the cardinal rule of catching; i.e., keeping his ungloved hand behind the glove and a foul tip broke his finger.  He was eleven and his baseball playing days were over for that summer.  Here’s where the “all things work together for good” part comes in.  After his injury his coach asked if he would be interested in going into the press box to announce the players as they came to bat.  He did and he was quite good at it. 

This all took place in Hope, Arkansas – the town was so small that the local radio station actually broadcast the little league games each Saturday.  One of the announcers of KXAR 149 heard Mike announcing the players and was impressed with his voice and skills and invited him to come to the station when he was old enough to get his FCC license.  He started to hang around the station when he was 13 and at 14 he got his license.  He started working at the station - a broken finger was what launched Mike Huckabee’s career in broadcasting – he now has 3 ABC radio shows and a weekly show on Fox News, “Huckabee” 8PM Eastern on Saturday and Sunday nights.  You never know what God might have in store for you when it comes to misfortunes……

All things work for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.