Coaching Isn't Easy

We're half way through the Little League season and after 8 years of coaching, I think this is the most difficult time I've had.

First, though, I have to say that yesterdays game was one of our best. We lost to the only undefeated team by one point. Finally, the kids are starting to swing the bat and have a little more confidence at the plate.

The hard part I believe is the age group that I'm coaching. It's mostly 9 and 10 year olds. Typically I coach older boys who are much easier in my opinion to coach. Coaching these younger boys, you really have to find the line between discipline and having fun. You can't get after them too much or they'll just shut down. If you don't get after them enough, you have a team full of chaos and disorder.

Because our batting has been so poor, most of our practices have been consumed with batting practice. This hasn't allowed much time for drills and team building exercises. I think TeamWork is where we suffer most. I've got kids who don't even know all the names of their teammates. To me, that's crazy. I grew up in the town we are in now and it was just normal to know "Everyone". I guess it's just not that way anymore.

Another difficult aspect of coaching is the coaching of your own son. Disciplining your own son is easy and believe me, he gets plenty of it. The hard part is building your own son's confidence. I think he is so afraid of letting me down that he becomes a nervous wreck during games. He is by far one of the best hitters on the team.......at practice. Come game time, the nerves take over. Yesterday he struck out three times. The last inning of yesterday's game, we were down by one, bases loaded, two outs. Guess who's up to bat.

The first two pitches were good pitches, he swung at both and missed. The third pitch looked good but the very young umpire called it a ball. Honestly it should have been strike three. The fourth pitch barely missed hitting the plate and the umpire called strike three. It's times like these that a player has to step up and take ownership of what has happened. My son of course tried blaming the umpire. Wasn't happening!!! I told him that the umpire wasn't responsible for the first two strikes. The problem now lies with trying to build a confidence at the plate that was pretty low in the first place.

I've invited a few boys from both teams (yesterdays game) to have batting practice today. This way the boys can pitch to each other instead of me pitching to them. I'm hoping this will help them build their confidence. Most of them can hit all day long when I'm pitching but when they face a pitcher who is one of their peers they seem to go into panic mode at the plate. I hope this will work.

The coach from the other team is a very good friend of mine and he's also a very good coach. His youngest son is the same age as my son. They're a great family who's friendship we value very much. After the game he had a good talk with my son. I think it helps a kid when all the info isn't coming from dad alone. DJ as I'll call him, is a great coach in my opinion. Though we all want to win, he does a good job and keeping the our goals as coaches straight. He builds really good ball players. If I didn't coach, I would hope that my son would be blessed with DJ. Both of our sons are going through the same "nervous" thing. I'm not sure if it's a dad thing or what but I hope we can help our sons get over it.

Anyway, to all the dads who coach their sons, my respect goes out to you. Both for the time and effort you put into the lives of other young people, it is an honorable endeavor. I'm learning....Have Faith and Keep it Fun.

Thanks for reading.