Our eldest son is going to kindergarten this fall and that's the earliest you can play actual baseball. So it's been tee-ball time for our family the last two months and, to our son's chagrin, it's come to an end.
When signing him up this spring I felt some obligation to coach. I know and love the game, my kid is obsessed, I'm more than capable and have (enough) time. I was hesitant to immediately sign up as a head coach, however, and checked the box for assistant. Part of the reason was knowing we'd be in Alaska for a week and I was unsure of taking on full responsibility knowing I'd be gone a chunk of the season. But it turns out there's a constant dearth of coaching volunteers and I ended up as the only assigned coach for our team anyway. Decision made, head coach it was. In addition to the first time one of our kids played any organized sport, it was going to be my first time coaching a team.
Beforehand I attended the parent's meeting that kicked off the season. It was good to hear from the board who runs the league and get a gauge on what this was going to be like. It's been a long time since I played little league. Then, as per the requirements to coach, I attended a virtual training with Positive Coaching Alliance. It was fun to hear from coaches who have done this a while and inspiring to get their takes on how to approach it. I was a little fired up and ready to be a good influence on this tee-ball team. It didn't take long to remember that it's tee-ball and I needed to get my head out the clouds. But I could help them have fun, learn the game a little and hopefully want to come back.
Even after doing this I was admittedly nervous, especially for the first practice. There was a lot of thought put into activities and games to keep this group of 12 four and five year-olds engaged. I had no idea how it was going to go. Well, it went fine, but more accurately it was a mess. I ran around like crazy and kept them moving and was entirely overwhelmed. On the infield each kid only got one swing. I did achieve my main goal of finding out what the kids could do, but the hour-long practice was thoroughly exhausting and I had no idea how I was going to do it all again two days later (our schedule was Tues/Thurs).
Some help arrived in the form of an email, one of the other dads seemingly took pity on me and volunteered to help going forward. He had twins on the team and is an elementary school gym teacher so he was basically perfect. I learned he has difficulties coaching his own kids (I fully understand that) and was also going to be gone for parts of the summer and that's why he didn't sign up initially, but he was there for most of our practices and games. A couple other dads ended up helping out too when they didn't have other responsibilities. I wouldn't have made it through the season without them.
Before the first 'game' me and the other head coach talked on the phone in the afternoon and planned out what we were going to do. He was more ambitious than I, wanting to pool our players for drills, play two games (one infield and one outfield) to mix it up and even rotate his defensive players during the innings. The goal was to keep everyone engaged but that's just a lot to ask the kids at this age. I went along with the drills but wanted to at least try using my whole team in the field for the first game and mostly keep them in their spots. In the end we only got through one inning, since both teams bat through the whole order. We learned to not have a rigid plan for the short practice time and to get started earlier in order to play more than one inning. I also became more open to splitting up when in the field.
Soon after we got into a (good) groove. The boys, for the most part, seemed to want to be there and got along great. In fact, it was a problem that they'd become fast friends and preferred running around and being silly to the activities I was trying to get them to try. Regardless they're good kids and were never distracted for too long. They had fun, I had fun, it was great.
One of the most encouraging pieces was seeing real progress. That progress can be really clear at the lowest levels of sport like this. We started repeatedly doing the most basic activities, running around the bases in order, learning how to throw, and catch and hit. The boys now are by no means experts at these things. But they no longer need prompting on when or where to run. Throwing has gotten better for sure. Hitting has for most of them improved pretty dramatically, remember this is with a real (though slightly soft), heavy baseball and metal bats which, as far as I know, they were all using for the first time. Catching is a bit rough, a work-in-progress, but they usually remember to move the glove to the ball. It can be scary I know.
Fielding was perhaps the biggest adventure. The first game just about everyone stood where I placed them and didn't move much. Then we dealt with significant mobbing, where every kid on the field went for the ball. The most amusing, or frustrating, part was when they would intentionally get in the way or try to take it from their teammates instead of letting them throw it to first. I tried to combat these mobs and drifting by putting disc practice cones at the defensive positions on the field. This worked really well and I'm glad I tried it. The boys appeared to be getting the names of the spots too, which is terrific. We also sometimes divided the team in half (kinda like what was suggested by that other coach), limiting the number of the boys on the infield. It was frequently surprising to see otherwise passive kids actually go for the ball when there were only a few of them out there. In saying all this I don't want to take too much credit, there was still a lot of playing in the dirt this year, often with the cones I put out to mark their positions. But they seemed to be getting it. In a development I really didn't see coming, every kid wanted to be catcher (i.e. put on the gear) as the season drew to a close.
In all, it's been a great experience. I'm very happy I got to be the head coach and do this, I'm looking forward to doing it again and hopefully get back some of these kids next year.
My advice (and notes to myself) on coaching young kids like this:
- Have a snack sign-up. A shared (i.e Google) spreadsheet is ideal.
- Do what you can to keep everyone engaged. Use smaller groups for activities.
- Turn as much as possible into games. Keep it fun!
- Let every kid play every position. Ask what they like/don't like.
- Have a plan, but don't get too caught up in it.
- Be happy with the most incremental improvements and generous with praise.
- Your most important job is getting them to want to come back. Don't forget it.
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