Little League season has arrived. We had the draft last night and will have our first practice tomorrow. We ended up with a fairly young team, but I'm really looking forward to having a lot of fun. I met a few of the boys at the field today just to throw the ball around and get a few hits in.
I thought this was my 14th year coaching, but I found an old picture of a minor league team that I had coached back in 97 and I've been coaching ever since. 16 years!!! I'm old!!!
Shouldn't I be the perfect coach by now? There are times when I still feel like I'm fumbling around with trying to teach the basics. While I think form is super important, repetition is ranked just as high. You can't beat just going outside and throwing a baseball around for an hour. I realize they are just kids, but I think striving for perfection with everything you teach only makes for better young ball players. The goal isn't to create robot like players who all play just alike, but to work on a players current skills and improve upon them. No throw is going to be alike and no swing is going to be alike. I think that's where some coaches fail. They try to make every kid swing just like the last book they read, or the last video they watched. At this age and with what little time we have to teach, those things just aren't going to happen. Little League lasts on average about 11 weeks (if you don't count all star season). It's a real challenge to change a kids habits in that amount of time. Repetition, repetition, repetition. This is the only way to make something become habit.
In years past, we've always had at least 12 kids per team. Numbers are so low this year that we each only have 11 kids. This is good and bad. It's good because you only have to substitute two players. It's bad because once summer gets here, it's much more likely to have only 8 kids show up for a game therefor having to forfeit. I've never had to forfeit a game and I definitely don't want to start now.
It's going to be a fun season. For a change, I'm really looking forward to the season this year. I was really starting to feel burned out and even this year I was worried I wasn't going to feel like coaching, but now that we have started, I'm confident were going to have fun.
Only 6 days left in the challenge. I'm hoping everyone sticks with it even after the 8th. A few of you have asked me to keep posting and to keep the challenge going, unofficially of course. I'm game for that if enough people are interested. With the weather warming up, I'm thinking it will be easier for people to start dropping the weight. After seeing the success that Someday Skinny is having with Mydietitian.com, I'm thinking about signing up. While I don't think eating good is rocket science, I do think that being accountable to someone who is going to evaluate your food habits can be beneficial. I'd like to start riding my bike to work, but I have all my baseball gear to haul so I'm not sure how to make that work. I could use the added miles though.
Well it's getting late and tomorrow is going to be a long day. Hope you all are doing well. Good night.
1 comment:
I think keeping the challenge "unofficially" going for as long as you can is a great idea! I'm feeling like these last 10 lbs. are going to be the toughest to lose, and especially, keep off!
Which is where I think MyDietitian is REALLY going to show its value! I'm making goals right now with my dietitian (Nikki) that are getting me through my "rut" days. I think if you could even do it just for a month, you'd be really surprised at the difference it makes! You're right that it's not rocket science but the little reminders are so nice! Especially when you have it there in color! You can look back on your day and realize that a day where you thought you did pretty well could actually use a lot of improvement...anyway, I could go on and on, sorry!
I'm just catching up on your posts. Loved the Easter pic of your family!8844
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