Category: Uncategorized
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Whether it’s baseball or softball, things don’t always go according to plan. Sometimes it’s the game strategy or pitching plan. But often, it’s the small mistakes that test a player the most. Today, I want to focus on what we do when those smaller moments don’t go our way. Maybe you throw a pitch that…
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I’ve written a few times about trust—finding a trusted voice, trusting the process, and trusting data—but I’ve never focused on how to build trust. So, here goes. When coaching a team, whether it’s young or experienced players, building trust is the key to everyone’s success. The easiest way to do that is through consistency. That…
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One of the most important parts of developing young athletes is creating practices that are more demanding than the games. When working with infielders, we may hit ground balls harder than anything they are likely to see during a game. They will misplay some. A ball may get through their legs. They may struggle to…
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To paraphrase Lewis Carroll, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road can get you there.” It’s a simple idea, but an important one in both youth sports and leadership. Goals tell us where we want to go. Clear expectations help us understand how to get there. As coaches, we often have goals for…
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A few months ago, I attended a baseball and softball coaching conference. During one of the sessions, the presenter was talking about the evolution of catching, and teaching hitters when he paused and said something that has stuck with me ever since: “Just remember, there are no always and never’s in baseball.” The more I…
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One of the hardest things about baseball and softball is that the results are obvious, but the process that created those results is often invisible. A hitter can flare a weak pop-up that drops between two fielders or hit a slow ground ball that finds a hole. The swing wasn’t particularly good, yet the box…
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One of the greatest predictors of success for any baseball or softball team isn’t talent alone—it’s the quality of the relationships within the team. Teams with strong, healthy relationships consistently communicate better, trust each other more, overcome adversity more effectively, and ultimately perform at a higher level. The same principle applies in the workplace. Within…
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As youth players get older, coaching naturally changes. There is always something fun about watching a group of five- and six-year-olds chase a baseball around the field, but there are limits to what you can realistically expect them to do. At those young ages, and for several years after, coaches focus almost exclusively on the…
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I’ve written before that the ultimate goal of most youth baseball and softball teams is to win a championship. It might be a league title, a tournament championship, a state championship, or someday even the College World Series or Major League Baseball’s World Series. In a previous post, I talked about the idea of “winning…
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One of the biggest mistakes we make as coaches—especially as players get older—is assuming they’ve “mastered” the fundamentals. As youth players age and gain experience, we naturally spend less and less time reinforcing the basics. We move on to more advanced concepts, complex strategies, situational play, analytics, and game planning. Those things absolutely matter. But…
