The privilege of coaching

I am using this blog post to remind my brothers and sisters out there who volunteer to coach youth teams how important it is to put the kids first and foremost every time you step on the field, court, or diamond.  Later this week I will update the blog about the past couple weekends of the Adrian College Baseball Bulldogs.  I spend a little time working with kids and coaches in our local communities. Below is a reminder I recently sent to many of or great community volunteer coaches:

Since many teams are now beginning to play games and compete in tournaments, especially in the pre-high school age groups, I thought it might be an appropriate time to remind coaches what a great privilege it is to have the opportunity to be a leader of young athletes.

 

The position of coach rates right up there with parents, teachers, and clergy members.  We sometimes need to be reminded that with this privilege comes responsibility that is bigger than the idea of winning games.  As a matter of fact, if we win games but are not outstanding role models then we haven’t really won at all.

As we head onto the softball and baseball fields each day it would be a good idea to take a silent moment to have a some self-reflection and remember that the children we work with are the main priorities.  Each individual athlete is more important than the outcome of any game, tournament, or season.  If we let one kid down, or fail to live up to the words we have spoken to them, or contribute to damaging their self image and self worth in any way, any championships won will be shallow and pointless.

Each of us has a life outside of coaching.  We have families at home and professional responsibilities at work.  We often have stressful circumstances at home and work that can result in heavy burdens as we go from one place to the next and put on our coaching hats in place of the other hats we wear away from coaching.  Though it can sometimes be difficult to leave the thoughts of those stressors behind, the clay-like psyches of the kids we work with are so important to take care of.

I first started coaching in the late 1970s and haven’t stopped.  I have been guilty at times of carrying my own frazzled self into the coaching arena and acted unreasonably toward the athletes and toward the sport itself.  That was an unfair and selfish thing for me to do.  As we gain in experience and maturity it usually becomes easier to understand that our young athletes are always the number one priority in our coaching situations.  As the saying goes, kids don't care how much you know until they know how much you care!

Take care of yourself, check your thoughts, clear your mind, and love the kids you coach!!

The climb to the peak

Now that we have the first two MIAA series under our belts, we have opportunities to continue to evaluate how we are pitching and try to tweak some things so that we can gradually make improvements during the season.  One goal that we occasionally talk about is that the season isn’t a sprint, and that we want to get better every day and thus be playing our best baseball in May when we get nearer to the post-season.

This year will be a first for us in the MIAA, as there will be a four team, double elimination tournament after the regular season ends.  For us at Adrian, having won the regular season championship the last few years and thus qualifying for the NCAA DIII Regionals, we now have to prove our mettle in the MIAA Tournament if we want to assure ourselves a spot in the Regionals.  I like the idea of a conference tournament, as there will now be very meaningful games (with post-season implications) played for everyone throughout the entire conference schedule.

With the idea that we will likely play again against our conference opponents in the MIAA Tournament, becoming familiar with their strengths and weaknesses is a given, but even more important than understanding the tendencies of our opponents is to get better at the things we do.

Some of the things we have discussed as a pitching staff in the last couple of weeks are things we have made improvements in.  As a staff in general, we are doing a better job of throwing to the bottom of the strike zone.  It is still important to make progress in that area, especially when there are runners on base. A location mistake up in the strike zone can lead to a run or two allowed, and in a conference that so far in 2012 has been littered with low scoring games, the fewer times we make mistakes up in the strike zone the better chance we have of putting zeros on the scoreboard for our opponents.

One of the points of emphasis for the next couple of weeks now are to continue to be aggressive in the strike zone early in the count.  We have only walked nine batters in our first eight league games, and one reason for that is that we have done a pretty good job of getting ahead of hitters early in the count.  When we get ahead in the count, it becomes easier to force the hitters to expand the hitting zone and make them hit pitchers’ pitches, thus hopefully hitting more balls away from the barrel of the bat.

In addition, we are trying to do a better job of attacking the opponent’s running game, not only by utilizing our pickoffs, but also by working on having quicker feet, more accurate throws, and disrupting the timing of the good, aggressive base runners.

After 18 games, we are nearly half way through our regular season schedule and over a quarter of the way through our conference schedule.  That means that we are really not even half way through with our climb to becoming as good as we can become in 2012.  Every season has high points and low points, and as we develop as a team we can improve the definition of what playing our best really means.  We haven’t yet come close to reaching our peak, but we are on our way there.