If you've ever watch 8 and 9 year olds play baseball, you're going to see lots of mistakes. They're still kids. That's got to be very frustrating to any coach. He may drill something into his young sluggers until it seems like second nature, but at game time, he'll be lucky if they listen to him half the time. The surest way to get a batter to swing away, for example, is to tell him to take a pitch. If you want a runner to slide, be sure to shout "up, up."Now don't get the idea these young ballplayers are purposely ignoring their coaches. They really want to listen, and they even want to win. But to them, this is still just a game.
And this brings me to a game during this weekend's 9U tournament in beautiful Coplay. A runner on third stepped off the bag before being told. He fortunately got back, but dug himself a deeper hole by waiting a second before running home after being sent. He still slid in safely and scored.
The thrill of sliding into home was quickly erased by the third base coach, who ran down the baseline to tower over this prostrate 9 year-old. The boy was reamed out, in front of both teams, for admittedly poor base running. Naturally, the kid returned to his bench in tears.
I was later told this is just "coaching fundamentals." If this kid was crying, that's his problem.
Frankly, I'm unaware of any coaching fundamentals that call for negative reinforcement that includes reducing a 9 year old kid to tears. That's why adults just ruin the game for the kids. The grown ups tend to get too focused on winning.
Now let me tell you this coach is a great guy who really does love the kids. He sacrifices a lot of his own time for them and has taught them a lot. But if he thinks he can teach kids by screaming at them until they start crying, he has a few things to learn himself.
10 comments:
If there is no crying in baseball.
What have NY fans been doing the last 8 years?
You have to be careful. Though it doesn't apply to all, I have heard and read horror stories about both coaches and parents taking kids baseball, cheerleading, whatever, too seriously. Sometimes adults are drawn into coaching kids' sports because of their own unresolved issues with power, failure, their parents, their childhoods, their fantasies of being a real major league coach, whatever. I also think that as each year passes, kids have less and less of a carefree childhood and the pressures and stresses of competition and grown up rat race training starts earlier and earlier. My parents said it about me, my grandparents said it about them and so on and so on. Do kids even catch fire flies in jars anymore? Little boys are conditioned to not cry in public by our society so it's got to be pretty scary or upsetting for 9 year old crying in baseball.
Let me give you another angle. The last year I officiated basketball, I was assigned to work with younger and relatively new officials. Needless to say, we didn't work any t.v. games or championship caliber games. But yet, we worked those games so hard, because every minute meant the world to those kids. Especially, at the end of games, when "the bench" gets in. We would work even harder then because for some of those students, that is the only time they see playing time; even if it is for a mere 10 to 20 seconds. (But when I say, "we work even harder," you have to imagine that in officiating - you start out giving 100% and you have to end the game giving 110%.)
Anyway, my focus of my last year officiating was to mentor younger or less experienced officials. One of the last games I worked, a bright young official got a little carried away. And before I could pull him aside and make the moment a teaching tool; he already made the mistake. It is one that he has hopefully rebounded from.
A "fan" - a word short for fanatic, was really heckling my partner. It was the end of the game. And my partner started to leave the court to head to the locker-room before me. Normally, officials jog off of the court together. We don't want to be hanging around to catch any guff from anyone. Anyway, he gave that heckler a mouthful. You should have seen the face of that fan. All I could hear the fan saying was, "He can't talk to me like that!" So I quickly ushered my partner into the lockerroom and quietly remarked to the fan, "Neither should you have set a poor example of sportsmanship for this whole gymnasium to witness."
Everybody has a part to play during these games. Coaches coach, players play, officials officiate, and fans cheer. Focus on sportmanship and your roles.
Peace, ~~Alex
When my father coached Little League baseball teams, he made sure that every kid who made it to practice played at least half the game, no matter what level of abilities he brought to the team. Sure, we lost a lot of games that way, but we all got to play at least three innings, and everyone was assured of getting to bat at least once per game. Great experience for us all, including learning to lose gracefully. (The parents with the "win at all costs" attitude put their kids on other teams. I, for one, did not miss those parents--or their kids.)
When I see something like what happened, it takes all the joy out of the game. It happened to my son years ago, and I never opened my mouth.
Every kid in this tournament team played. Every kid batted. And the manager took the right approach with the kids, reminding them himself that this is just a game and that they are there primarily to learn and have fun.
And I take my hat off to coaches, who spend hours dealing with everything from phone calls to teaching to baby-sitting to dealing with irate parents. This is one instance where a normally good coach went too far.
Screaming at 8 and 9-year olds until they cry represents a failure to properly coach. I don't want to hear about his sacrifice of time. If he's going to act as described, he should respectfully stay home and leave the job to somebody with a better disposition. I cringed as I read the story. The coach has likely created a kid who'll hate baseball and the guy who ruined the game for him when he was 8 or 9.
"This is for the coaches. You have a greater influence on these children than you realize. Everything you say is taken as gospel. When you criticize them, it stings more than you know. You can coach without being insulting. Plus, he or she wants to do well more than you want them to do well. In addition, they follow your example. If you cry about umpires, so will they. If you're a poor sport, your team will be full of poor sports. And remember this: 20 years from now, the players you coach won't remember which games you won and lost, but they will remember if you were a man with good character or not."
That coach was an idiot and should apologize to the child and his parents for humiliating him that way. If it was my child or grandchild I would have called him out after the game. There is enough pressure on these kids to succeed let alone be perfect in their execution of baseball fundamentals. I have seen 9 year olds resort to tears when they strike out with bases loaded to end a game. In those cases most adults just want to console the youngster and encourage him to knock one out the next time. Major leaguers make mental errors every day, and we expect 8 and 9 year olds to be perfect? That coach needs to retire if he can't instruct kids rather than berate them.
Sorry, but "Great Guys" don't do stuff like that.
There are far too many of these types out there. They are real toughguys when they are screaming at kids.
When I was 11, we had two teachers in 6th grade who screamed, humiliated students, overturned their desks, once made a little girl so scared she urinated on herself and transferred out. We were so terrified we could hardly concentrate on our studies. Our parents tolerated it because back then they were so respected as "excellent teachers" (they were smart). But now that we are the age our parents were and have kids that are 11, all we remember is how terrifying school was and how much we hate those two teachers and how unnecessary their teaching styles were. I once ran into one of the two and was tempted to confront him but he was so old and decrepit that I just let it go. Despite how GREAT these two teachers were, we learned no more or less than we did from the nicer more mentally stable ones.
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