My first year of Little League, I was a pretty good second baseman. I had good reactions, great hand-eye coordination and could throw the ball to my target. Not much got by me. While playing second base I had fun and as a result got better. My bat was on fire, too. I loved baseball.
I had the best batting average on a fairly mediocre team. No power but I was a frequent baserunner.
Going into the second year, I was ready to keep going at second. We had a good shortstop who took that job from me in minors, a tough as nails third baseman who once took a liner off his head and still made a throw to first, and our first baseman towered over us and could hit home runs (with my bat, by the way).
We got a new coach in my second year and he brought with him a tiny little fellow, his son, who also fancied himself a second baseman. In my mind I was faster, smarter at the position and hit well in practice.
The coach awarded his son the job of starting second baseman.
I thought it was bull you-know-what and did not take it well when I was sent to play right field. I stood right behind the kid playing MY position.
I stewed out there in something I would in the future learn was self-loathing. Not a fun nor a productive place to be.
Years later I came to learn that perhaps this dad/coach wasn’t wrong. He presented me with a different opportunity, that’s all. And I didn’t see it at the time.
My mistake, and I see this repeatedly now that I am not a little kid, was I got mad at the wrong thing. I got mad at a coach who had a good ball player as a son who was perhaps potentially better than me and chose him over me.
He didn't cut me from the team nor did he tell me baseball wasn't for me.
He just put me in a different position.
The rest of the story was on me, though I didn't have the capacity to understand it at the time.
Instead of trying to become the best outfielder and maybe asking for more reps at second in practice to get better and show my worth, I became disinterested in what I loved about baseball.
I allowed my brain to think I was a victim of some injustice instead of taking the challenge.
(What a lesson that turned out to be eventually.)
There are injustices in the world for certain, but the only way to know an injustice has been thrust upon you is after you appeal with solid evidence and are still denied.
I did not do that, so the coach’s choice was correct even when his son made error after error.
Because I didn’t prove myself any better, I truly could not argue. And to my parents’ credit, neither did they. (Thanks mom and dad.)
This brings me to the point of this column. I cover far more teams than Titusville so these next few examples are not necessarily about the Rockets. But you, as readers, can look inside yourself and decide if this hitting close to home and if my slightly arthritically bent finger is pointing at you.
Coaches do not get paid very much (though considerably better than most high school musical/play directors—but that is a subject of another column.) And most of the coaches you see aren’t getting paid at all.
Coaches who get paid might put it in a vacation fund, though many give a lot of it back in booster fundraisers.
Those who don’t get paid do it for the love of the game, the school or the area. But most importantly they do it for the kids. They had someone who made a difference to them and they are giving back.
So, when I see or hear about parents acting like parts of their nether regions we try not to talk about or I see kids disrespecting the coaches and the game, I reflect on my time in Little League and wonder how much better my life could’ve been had I changed my attitude.
Don’t get me wrong, in my nearly 30 years covering high school sports I have seen my share of terrible coaches and I also wouldn't change my path. I got where I was supposed to be and perhaps so did coaches. And they are doing their best and are hired by a school district with hope.
There is a process we all need to realize for the betterment of the programs they serve.
Bad coaches, unless they are directly harming a child, need to be dealt with through the athletic director, superintendent or school board. Not on the sidelines before or after a game. And they can investigate what the coach is doing for the betterment of your child and the program.
A local coach just recently resigned after never coming close to a winning record. That is the process, though it could be argued the school board should’ve stepped in years ago. But the coach was a good person and as coaches do, taught life lessons to the players even in loss.
In this past year, I watched a team thrive only to crash following an incident in which parents verbally attacked the coach over their child’s playing time. The team was headed towards a potential historic season. It can’t be completely determined the confrontation pulled the rug out from the team, but it certainly dented the hood and affected the aerodynamics of a fine season.
A few years ago, I witnessed a couple of players acting up and the coach decided to discipline them. They were stars of the team. This led to hardships between kids, their parents and the coaches. This was a district championship level team, destroyed by egos and the inability to trust the process. Players were kicked off the team and others quit. That team was one and out in the playoffs. How good could they have been if kids accepted their fate, learned from their mistakes and grew?
Coaches for a typical sports season is roughly a three month season. But it’s not three months for the coaches. It’s 12. People who truly understand teachers, and coaches are teachers, know you never turn it off. I watch coaches, even those who weren’t gifted, come to think of their players as people worth putting their time into hoping they become good solid adults in their community.
This isn’t an exaggeration.
My junior high football coach was a big fan of leg lifts. Most everyone groaned as he made us hold our feet elevated for a full minute. He insisted our feet needed to stay six inches above the ground the whole time. Only six inches.
Believe it or not, underneath this nearly 60 years of beer belly fat lies a six pack that could do this for beyond the 60 seconds while listening to my fellow teammates moan and the thuds of their legs crashing down. Mr. Bowes, that sadistic little coach with a big mustache, would come by periodically and drop a football on your gut while we did this.
He wasn’t thinking about whether we could do it, whether it hurt. It was a test of our spirit to do beyond what we thought we were capable. No one was cut for dropping their feet, but we learned what we could do.
Coaches are seldom looking for pats on the back. Even the best coach I’ve probably ever met, Sheila Bancroft of Maplewood volleyball, just wants her teams to reach their potential and sometimes that is a 4-12 season. She invests so much in the kids year after year that it’s likely they never end up 4-12.
So what is this diatribe about?
Because that’s what coaches, especially successful coaches do - help kids learn the lessons to become quality adults. If they win games that is the bonus.
If your kid isn’t getting the playing time you think they deserve, perhaps it’s a conversation about attitudes in practice that your kid exhibits or it is a conversation in private with the coach showing them respect to gain a better understanding.
I will leave you with one last story hoping that this makes sense about the process.
I was a good dribbler in basketball. Pretty hard to take the ball away from me and I was a born leader in backyard sports, so much so that I often played with kids six years older than me and would come up with the plays that would help us win.
What I learned is I couldn’t be coached to not be the point guard or leader of the team.
As a result, I was cut from the team in my junior year.
Coach was right, though he admitted to me later he wasn’t... but he was.
That winter I directed my recreation league team to the finals and just embarrassed the varsity players there and in gym class. I had skills but was arrogant. We lost the championship in rec league because of not seeing the big picture.
Sports in one place we find leaders and develop the skills of collaboration or get weeded out for our arrogance or inability to learn. Coaches see all these things in us.
If the school board hires coaches to perform the job of teaching your kids it is best to let them coach. And if you think it is needed, deal with your issues properly, not by disrupting the team mid-season. Help the district develop better coaches to lead your kids in the off-season and assist in aspects of youth sports.
I had the best batting average on a fairly mediocre team. No power but I was a frequent baserunner.
Going into the second year, I was ready to keep going at second. We had a good shortstop who took that job from me in minors, a tough as nails third baseman who once took a liner off his head and still made a throw to first, and our first baseman towered over us and could hit home runs (with my bat, by the way).
We got a new coach in my second year and he brought with him a tiny little fellow, his son, who also fancied himself a second baseman. In my mind I was faster, smarter at the position and hit well in practice.
The coach awarded his son the job of starting second baseman.
I thought it was bull you-know-what and did not take it well when I was sent to play right field. I stood right behind the kid playing MY position.
I stewed out there in something I would in the future learn was self-loathing. Not a fun nor a productive place to be.
Years later I came to learn that perhaps this dad/coach wasn’t wrong. He presented me with a different opportunity, that’s all. And I didn’t see it at the time.
My mistake, and I see this repeatedly now that I am not a little kid, was I got mad at the wrong thing. I got mad at a coach who had a good ball player as a son who was perhaps potentially better than me and chose him over me.
He didn't cut me from the team nor did he tell me baseball wasn't for me.
He just put me in a different position.
The rest of the story was on me, though I didn't have the capacity to understand it at the time.
Instead of trying to become the best outfielder and maybe asking for more reps at second in practice to get better and show my worth, I became disinterested in what I loved about baseball.
I allowed my brain to think I was a victim of some injustice instead of taking the challenge.
(What a lesson that turned out to be eventually.)
There are injustices in the world for certain, but the only way to know an injustice has been thrust upon you is after you appeal with solid evidence and are still denied.
I did not do that, so the coach’s choice was correct even when his son made error after error.
Because I didn’t prove myself any better, I truly could not argue. And to my parents’ credit, neither did they. (Thanks mom and dad.)
This brings me to the point of this column. I cover far more teams than Titusville so these next few examples are not necessarily about the Rockets. But you, as readers, can look inside yourself and decide if this hitting close to home and if my slightly arthritically bent finger is pointing at you.
Coaches do not get paid very much (though considerably better than most high school musical/play directors—but that is a subject of another column.) And most of the coaches you see aren’t getting paid at all.
Coaches who get paid might put it in a vacation fund, though many give a lot of it back in booster fundraisers.
Those who don’t get paid do it for the love of the game, the school or the area. But most importantly they do it for the kids. They had someone who made a difference to them and they are giving back.
So, when I see or hear about parents acting like parts of their nether regions we try not to talk about or I see kids disrespecting the coaches and the game, I reflect on my time in Little League and wonder how much better my life could’ve been had I changed my attitude.
Don’t get me wrong, in my nearly 30 years covering high school sports I have seen my share of terrible coaches and I also wouldn't change my path. I got where I was supposed to be and perhaps so did coaches. And they are doing their best and are hired by a school district with hope.
There is a process we all need to realize for the betterment of the programs they serve.
Bad coaches, unless they are directly harming a child, need to be dealt with through the athletic director, superintendent or school board. Not on the sidelines before or after a game. And they can investigate what the coach is doing for the betterment of your child and the program.
A local coach just recently resigned after never coming close to a winning record. That is the process, though it could be argued the school board should’ve stepped in years ago. But the coach was a good person and as coaches do, taught life lessons to the players even in loss.
In this past year, I watched a team thrive only to crash following an incident in which parents verbally attacked the coach over their child’s playing time. The team was headed towards a potential historic season. It can’t be completely determined the confrontation pulled the rug out from the team, but it certainly dented the hood and affected the aerodynamics of a fine season.
A few years ago, I witnessed a couple of players acting up and the coach decided to discipline them. They were stars of the team. This led to hardships between kids, their parents and the coaches. This was a district championship level team, destroyed by egos and the inability to trust the process. Players were kicked off the team and others quit. That team was one and out in the playoffs. How good could they have been if kids accepted their fate, learned from their mistakes and grew?
Coaches for a typical sports season is roughly a three month season. But it’s not three months for the coaches. It’s 12. People who truly understand teachers, and coaches are teachers, know you never turn it off. I watch coaches, even those who weren’t gifted, come to think of their players as people worth putting their time into hoping they become good solid adults in their community.
This isn’t an exaggeration.
My junior high football coach was a big fan of leg lifts. Most everyone groaned as he made us hold our feet elevated for a full minute. He insisted our feet needed to stay six inches above the ground the whole time. Only six inches.
Believe it or not, underneath this nearly 60 years of beer belly fat lies a six pack that could do this for beyond the 60 seconds while listening to my fellow teammates moan and the thuds of their legs crashing down. Mr. Bowes, that sadistic little coach with a big mustache, would come by periodically and drop a football on your gut while we did this.
He wasn’t thinking about whether we could do it, whether it hurt. It was a test of our spirit to do beyond what we thought we were capable. No one was cut for dropping their feet, but we learned what we could do.
Coaches are seldom looking for pats on the back. Even the best coach I’ve probably ever met, Sheila Bancroft of Maplewood volleyball, just wants her teams to reach their potential and sometimes that is a 4-12 season. She invests so much in the kids year after year that it’s likely they never end up 4-12.
So what is this diatribe about?
Because that’s what coaches, especially successful coaches do - help kids learn the lessons to become quality adults. If they win games that is the bonus.
If your kid isn’t getting the playing time you think they deserve, perhaps it’s a conversation about attitudes in practice that your kid exhibits or it is a conversation in private with the coach showing them respect to gain a better understanding.
I will leave you with one last story hoping that this makes sense about the process.
I was a good dribbler in basketball. Pretty hard to take the ball away from me and I was a born leader in backyard sports, so much so that I often played with kids six years older than me and would come up with the plays that would help us win.
What I learned is I couldn’t be coached to not be the point guard or leader of the team.
As a result, I was cut from the team in my junior year.
Coach was right, though he admitted to me later he wasn’t... but he was.
That winter I directed my recreation league team to the finals and just embarrassed the varsity players there and in gym class. I had skills but was arrogant. We lost the championship in rec league because of not seeing the big picture.
Sports in one place we find leaders and develop the skills of collaboration or get weeded out for our arrogance or inability to learn. Coaches see all these things in us.
If the school board hires coaches to perform the job of teaching your kids it is best to let them coach. And if you think it is needed, deal with your issues properly, not by disrupting the team mid-season. Help the district develop better coaches to lead your kids in the off-season and assist in aspects of youth sports.
RSS Feed