What Should be Important to Youth Coaches

With league championship names such as “Super Bowl” and “World Series,” it is easy to understand why youth coaches get caught up in the allure of winning championships.  As a youth coach, if your main goal is to win a championship, you are missing a wonderful opportunity to improve the lives of the athletes you coach.  Even if you are able to win a league, region, state, or national championship, if that is the team’s only focus, the athletes will miss one heck of a journey along the way.

Life is a competition, start now!

As anyone who has a job in a competitive line of work knows, much of life is a competition.  You have to compete with many others for that first job, a promotion, or to become vice-president.  Those starting small businesses have to compete for start-up costs and for a niche in the market.  Why not teach athletes these competition skills at a young age (12 years and older)?  It is possible to teach competition without having the focus being to win a championship.  Create small competitions in practice as often as you can .  Emphasize healthy competition for the sake of competing, and not necessarily to win anything tangible.  Whenever possible remove extrinsic rewards from tactical games in practice so athletes begin to see the value in competing against others.  Your athletes will begin to see the benefit of competing against others and will begin to enjoy the process of competition regardless of the outcome.

Use failure appropriately

If the entire season is set up to win the championship, anything less than that can be viewed as a failure when, in fact, many successes can come from failures. Since much of life is a competition, it is vital for young athletes to learn how to deal with failure.  It may take several interviews to get that first job, you may be passed over for a promotion, and you may never become vice-president.  Just because success doesn’t happen immediately doesn’t mean that it won’t.  In our instant gratification society, it is difficult for your people to understand that not succeeding right away does not make one a failure.  Youth coaches can instill this value of working through failure in their athletes by framing it as a chance for improvement.  Coaches should model this behavior by looking for things to improve after failure, and creating “recipes for success” for their teams, their athletes, and themselves.   Even if a team comes up short of its goal of winning a championship, each individual player on the team can become a better person by striving to improve and learning to deal with failure appropriately.

Keep in mind what is important to the players and their families

Youth and high school athletics are for the athletes, not the coaches.  As you are developing a season plan, remember that players are there to have fun, get better, and have a positive experience.  Most parents enroll their kids in youth and high school athletics for similar reasons, but safety is also at the forefront of parent’s minds.  If you truly believe in the benefit of youth sports as a builder of character, one of your main goals should be to keep the players coming back year after year.  In order to do that, coaches should focus on giving their players as positive of an experience as they can, regardless of final record.  Small things such as giving your athletes positive but honest feedback, creating a positive team environment, and creating fun interesting practices for your athletes every day can make a huge difference in an athlete’s perception of their experience.

Over the past few years, I have had many current and former youth and high school coaches report to me that their biggest regret as a coach was that they focused on winning too much.  There is much more that coaching youth sports than just simply winning.  Youth coaches must look out for the safety of their players while ensuring that they have fun, improve as players, and develop as people.  

Creating competition by using challenges

In one of our last posts, we discussed ways to keep practices fun and energetic by using tactical games.  Another effective method that will accomplish the same goal while creating pressure is to use a daily skills challenge.  We start every day with a specified amount of conditioning at the end of practice (not a huge amount, but enough to motivate).  At some point during practice, we select up to four players to participate in a skills challenge.  Each time they perform the task successfully we take one rep off the conditioning.  For example if they started with twelve “poles” as conditioning, and performed the task correctly eight times, they would only have four “poles” at the end of practice.

I do not believe in using conditioning as a form of punishmnet.  I believe that it creates resentment, and players begin to view conditioning as a negative experience instead of a tool to make themselves better.  Even though these challenges do tie performance to conditioning, it is not in a negative way.  Because they start with a specified amount and are able to work them off, this is giving a positive reward for a good performance instead of punishing for a negative performance.  You MUST frame it that way to your athletes.  When they accomplish the goal set forth, be sure to subtract from the overall level of conditioning.  Do not start from zero and add one for every failure.

Long tee challenge

Set up a tee at one end of the cage.  Their goal is to hit a line drive off the back of the cage.  We set the conditioning level at six, 60-yard sprints.  Three players get two swings each.  Each time they hit a line drive off the back of the cage, we take a sprint away.

Bunting Challenge

Set up cones about four feet off each foul line.  Players are to sacrifice bunt between the cones and the foul line.  We set the conditioning level at eight “poles.”  We take one away for each successful bunt.

Catcher blocking challenge

Draw a circle around home plate in the dirt (approximately 6-8 feet in diameter).  Throw balls in the dirt for the catcher to block.  Their goal is to block the ball, scramble to their feet and get the ball back in their hands before the ball leaves the circle.  Each time they accomplish this goal, take a sprint away.

Pitcher/Catcher to 2nd base

Pitchers deliver a pitch from the stretch, the catcher receives it and throws to second base.  Their goal is for this combined time to be less than 3.5 seconds (at the high school level). We set the conditioning for this particular challenge at ten straight steals.  This ties the conditioning to the skill being challenged.  Again for each successful try, take a straight steal away.

With this challenge, be careful that your players don't "cheat" by not using proper mechanics on the mound or by jumping out early behind the plate.  If they cheat, count it as an unsuccessful try.

General advice 

As I mentioned earlier, I do not like to use conditioning as punishment, but the reality is that baseball players do need conditioning.  We have simply allowed our players to decrease the amount of conditioning by accomplishing skills that we deem important.

I recommend having the whole team around watching the challenge.  This increases the intensity and helps your players learn to perform in pressure situations.  Also, feel free change the level of success in your individual challenges.  Ideally, you would like the challenges to be difficult, but attainable.  A quality challenge will allow the players to reduce their conditioning by about a half.