Latest Posts
One Misunderstood Quality of a Great Youth Sports Coach
Tryout season is here and there are plenty of kids out there looking for a team. I believe a major factor in selecting a team is the quality of the coach. It’s probably an overstatement, but I would venture to say the main reason why a parent moves their kid from one team to another is because they believe the new team has a better coach….
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Linchpin to Character Development in Youth Sports
Last weekend, I had a mini-rant on Facebook about character development and sportsmanship, a rant in which I said, “youth sports coaches and parents who can’t handle bad calls or losses disgust me.” Here’s the problem with my rant: I have many friends who coach in a variety of sports. Some are calm, cool, and collected in their dealings with officials and questionable calls. Others…
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Mia Hamm Principle
For our summers vacation in 2015 we made the twelve-hour drive to Gulf Shores Alabama where my youngest son’s team competed in the USSSA Global World Series. It was a lot of fun and fierce competition. Generally, the mornings were spent playing baseball and the evenings were spent on the beach. The final day of our vacation consisted of a twelve-hour ride home where I could reflect…
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Growth Mindset
Below is an email I send to the parents of the 7U baseball team I coached 3 years ago. I start off by saying I’m going to make some big, bold statements. Looking back I don’t think my statements were all that bold, but here’s what I wrote. Let me begin with a couple big, bold statements. #1) I believe teaching our athletes a growth mindset is…
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Experience Over Outcome
I stumbled across this post by veteran NFL Network reporter Alex Flanagan, and I believe it is spot on. In Flanagan’s post 5 Common Mistakes Most Sports Parents Are Making she tells a story of her daughter’s first volleyball game to illustrate the first mistake of “failing to enjoy the fun of failure.” As I read the story, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities to what…
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GSP Principle
A couple seasons back I was talking to a friend about youth baseball. He was coaching his son in tee ball and I was serving as an assistant coach on my son’s coach pitch team. We were sharing ideas about practice methods for those younger age groups. I mentioned that sometimes I think we should just throw the kids a tennis ball and tell them…
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Caught Looking
Plaster this quote everywhere; inside the score book, inside your coaching notebook, write it under the bill of your hat if you have to, whatever it takes just don’t forget these words. “There is nothing tough about getting negative when things go wrong. Any toddler throwing a tantrum is “tough” in that sense. A truly disciplined coach provides emotional support to a player who has…
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Teaching Love – The Critical First Phase
On a cool and overcast Sunday afternoon in November we were up in Corinth playing a tournament. This was to be our last tournament of the season and we playing well. At that time we were not accustom to playing so late on a Sunday afternoon so there was some added pressure. Prior to our game we were taking batting practice on one of the…
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The Making of a Cheater
“Wrap him up!” the coach yelled. A phrase I would expect to hear at a youth football game, but on this day I was watching an 8U basketball game. Admittedly I do not have an abundance of basketball knowledge but I know that in basketball you cannot wrap your arms around the player you are guarding. I’ve seen our coaches instruct our players to keep their arms extended…
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How Does Your Team Measure Success
After suffering a hard-fought, last-second loss in a game which the Detroit Lions played really well, rookie Head Coach Rob Marinelli had the following to say in his first post game press conference. “It’s not good enough… I’m not interested in playing hard and well; I’m interested in winning. There’s no option, there’s no solution other than winning. That’s it; I wont accept anything less….I’m not…
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