COACHES' INTERACTION WITH PLAYERS

Now I want to talk about the coaches’ interaction with the players.  We demanded perfection in all of our practice routines from stretching all the way through to sprints.  We set the boundaries early on and we strictly maintained them.  The players were expected to be as intense stretching as they were for hitting or bunting or tackling or pass catching drills.  We wasted little effort in all we did.  For example, when playing catch to warm up before baseball, not only were they given a strict routine to follow for warm up, but the players were also encouraged to throw at a spot on their catch partner.  When, in a baseball game, are you not throwing AT something?  Make it a habit. 

Allow me to address how we corrected players when they were not perfect at practice—yes, they were not perfect all the time.  My coaches were encouraged to be themselves.  I am fairly VOCAL.  Other coaches I worked with were a little more reserved.  We were always conscious of being genuine—no fakes.  But never let it go when a player needs to be corrected.  NEVER.  You are cheating that player out of an opportunity to get better and learn. 

Try to start with a positive—I think we’ve all heard that.  The most important requirement I had of myself and my coaches was that they were to make as big a deal out of when the player got it right as they did when they were correcting the imperfection! 

But most of all NEVER LEAVE THEM DOWN!  If a player had a particularly rough practice, I wanted his coach to have his arm around him as he walked him to his parent’s car.  I wanted the coach to let that player know how valuable he was to this team and how much we enjoyed his spirit, his smile, his humor…  Whatever was true for that particular player.  I have called kids at home in the evening following a tough practice just to tell him all the reasons we love having him on our team.

Now, other than the obvious common human decency and respect every player (person) deserves, let me tell you the result of NEVER LEAVE THEM DOWN.  Every game day, the players that showed up on our teams were confident, proud, full of self-esteem, in a great mood, and expecting only good things to happen.  They were not afraid to make mistakes and consequently were able to play loose and focus only on their responsibilities.  They had a confident swagger—and that reality was not lost on our opponents.