Concerned About The Quality Of Your Kid’s Baseball/Softball Coach? …this is what you can do to make things better

Why Aren’t They Playing Better?

As parents we likely have stuck around and watched a bit of our kids practices.   Hmmmm, not exactly what we expected?  We thought our child’s batting would improve more and that the pitchers would be throwing more strikes.  And, my goodness, what’s the deal with all the mistakes?  Why isn’t the coach doing a better job?  The kids should be playing better, right?

Maybe we haven’t played before and don’t really know the game.  We put our kids into baseball and softball for our kids to learn and get better.  But our child is not improving as much as we expected.  Gosh, they have a coach, isn’t it the coach’s job to teach them skills, teach them how to play the game and have them improving?

Some of us might think to ourselves that we know the game a little bit; played it some in our youth.  We have a few ideas of how the practices could be more productive or how to teach some of the skills a little better.  Maybe we thought about contacting the coach to make a few suggestions? 

Before we go any further, let’s first identify who the coach is.  The coach, in most cases, is a parent just like us.  Their child is playing on the team; the team needs a coach.  Fortunately, that parent volunteered to coach the team.

“Volunteered!”

That is the key word we must keep in mind before we conjure up thoughts of questioning the coaching of the team or our child.  It is important to understand that professional coaches do not suddenly appear in every neighborhood, by the dozens, across the US, Canada and the world each spring. 

They Are Our Neighbors

Those coaches appear from the homes in our neighborhood, they are our neighbors and the parents of our kids’ classmates at school.  They shop at the same grocery store, attend the same church, and walk the same streets as us.  Most of these parents, er ‘coaches’, are not experts in the sport.  They are regular folks volunteering their time, so our kids have an opportunity to play.  Many parents do not understand how lucky the kids are to have a coach at all. 

Most leagues find themselves scrambling each year to fill coaching vacancies right up to the start of practices.

It is important for us to understand this before we think of questioning a coach.  We first need to consider just thanking them for even being there.  Coaching is a big-time commitment.  It’s not just the 90 minutes or 2-hours on the field for practices and being at the games.  The hours put into coaching double when we factor in time invested away from the field.

Off-Field Requirements

These volunteer coaches attend a variety of pre-season meetings, they collect equipment and cart it around for the entire season and, among other things not mentioned here, they prepare for those practices and games.  That preparation time is juggled around managing their other kids who are not members of the team they are coaching.  Some are coaching a second team of a sibling.

Our kids’ coaches must coordinate with a spouse who is likely picking up some extra domestic duties for the coach to fulfill their commitment to the kids on the team - our kids.  Most coaches also sacrifice something in their work life in order to coach.  They have to figure out how to scoot out of work early on some days, not to mention that coaching takes up brain space; it is inevitable that their work production suffers somewhat during the season.

Wow, maybe we really should give our child’s coach a big THANKS! for making the commitment in the first place and forget about the criticisms that have been in our thoughts lately.

Nothing to Fear

The good news is we can impact these things …next year WE can volunteer to coach.  Before that big neon sign in our brain starts flashing, “No Way!” we can rest assured that most anyone who cares about kids can coach youth baseball and softball.  It doesn’t matter how little or how much we know about the game.  It just takes some time, energy and a desire to contribute something positive to the growing up years of the kids in Our neighborhood.  What could be better than spending a half dozen hours a week with our own child and their friends playing in the park?

Don’t worry about not having much knowledge of the game.  It is easy to learn to coach youth baseball and softball.  They are arguably the simplest of the team sports to coach.  There are no fancy Triangle Defenses or West Coast Offenses to master.  The players are positioned pretty much the same as they have been for the past 150 years.  The fundamentals of throwing, batting and fielding are much simpler than it appears and it doesn’t take much to learn to teach these skills.

The Resources You Need Are Right Here*

This website has all the information you need to coach at the 12U level.  Look at the Coaching Guide, Practice Plans, Skill Building Warm-up, Batting Practice and Tee Ball pages on this site.    This information is provided to make coaching a youth baseball or softball something that anyone can do, do well, and have a great time doing it.

The next time we feel a criticism for the ‘Coach’ welling up in our minds let’s remind ourselves that they are just a mom or dad like us.  If we really want things to be different, we need to check with the person in the mirror.  That person is no different than the current coach other than making the commitment of time and energy to get out there and coach.

We need not have anything to fear in taking the job ...except those pesky parents that might bug us because they don’t understand what it’s like to be in the shoes of a youth softball or baseball coach. ;)

* "A parent complimented me on how much his kids are learning due to my ‘extensive baseball knowledge'. Of course most of the finer points have been taken more or less verbatim from Baseball Positive."
- Nick (Parent, Coach & League Board Member) - Toronto 

* “I cannot express my gratitude enough for your efforts in producing such a document and leagues around the country would be wise to adopt your teaching if they wish to teach sound, fun baseball.”
Yours in Baseball,
   -  Sean Cherry. Manager, 2018 Coeur d Alene Little League All-stars, 2018 LLWS Participants