Dos and Don’ts for Hiring Professional Coaches

Parents need to be cautious when thinking about hiring a private, professional coach for their young players. There are many ways to mess up a youth baseball player, and one good way is to poorly manage his professional training.

I’ve talked with many parents over the years about professional coaches. It’s very common for a desperate parent to grasp for straws in an attempt to raise a child’s game. Parents have asked me for my opinions regarding professional coaches when their children were just 7 and 8 years old. It seems kids can never be too young to start grooming for excellence.

Before we get into the discussion of how to get a coach, let’s begin by understanding the reasoning for seeking professional training. Making mistakes while playing is not a reason to use a professional coach because we all make mistakes. Wanting to hit more home runs is not a reason to use a professional coach. Nor is wanting to strike out more batters a good reason. We all judge our effectiveness in specific ways, but increasing home runs or strike outs in the absence of the bigger picture is not healthy. The bigger picture is that we want to improve specific aspects of our game like hitting, pitching, fielding or running. If a player wants to be a better pitcher, he may be a good candidate for a professional coach.

My advice to parents has never changed. There are a number of things to keep in mind when considering professional coaches. Much of it isn’t as straightforward as it seems.

A child who is too young should not have a professional coach. The first goal we should all have is instilling a love of the game and an excitement to play. I readily admit that kids have more fun when they are confident and successful, but no child should be thinking of winning and being a stud at 8. I’ve seen many 12-year-olds who are competitive in nature but don’t care about winning enough to attend regular lessons.

Parents must consistently support the private training sessions and see the process through. Baseball is a game of repetition. It takes thousands of reps to build good mechanics or correct mechanical problems. These reps happen over the course of years. It also happens only through timely and consistent reinforcement. If a player can’t attend coaching sessions at least once a week for years to come, he won’t set in place the good habits needed for his success.

I’ve had many parents say that their kids will get something out of one or two visits to a professional coach. That may be true in one case in a thousand, but the vast majority of children cannot learn that way. It’s usually more confusing to get and store partial information than it is to not get the information in the first place. Few sessions or infrequent sessions with a professional coach will do no good.

Choosing a professional coach is a very tricky business. A player must be able to establish a good report with his coach or he will not learn as effectively. A family needs to be fairly certain that a coach is equally committed to the relationship. It is helpful that parents understand and agree with a coach’s approach to teaching, learning, playing and improving.

Changing coaches might be helpful for older players. Once a player has grown enough in his game to understand what he does and why he does it, he can compare one coaching approach to the next. Older, more mature players are able to ask questions of their coaches. They can also synthesize examples and information, and later test their own results. This ability usually doesn’t develop earlier than high school, and some players are never able to think at that level. Younger players simply don’t have all the tools that maturity and experience can bring. So, changing coaches often may do more harm than good.

When looking for a professional coach for children younger than 14, we need to avoid confusing the player. Coaches should be researched carefully and interviewed to find out what they teach and how they teach it. Players should join in the selection process to make sure they are completely invested. Parents must understand that this coach-player relationship needs to remain constant for years. Without appropriate commitment, hiring a professional coach is a waste of money at best and damaging to the player at worst.

A Hit Batter is as Good as an Uninvolved Parent

Parents should attend practices, and not for the reasons you might suspect. Parents should attend practices to find out what their player’s coach teaches. If parents don’t know what a coach teach, a parent cannot decide if they have found the right coach.

So we're at the cages the other day, me and the 12U team (the pitching tunnels and not those nearly useless machine cages). I've got my guys in a couple tunnels and there's an 8U club team in a couple of tunnels near us. I could comment on the wisdom of putting 7- and 8-year-olds onto a club / travel team, but let’s not go there today – I just don’t have the energy for that one. Anyway, the younger team was wrapping up. They gathered around for a review and teaching session.

“Remember,” one coach tells the team, “a walk is as good as a hit.”

That pearl of wisdom has been around a long time. I suppose that if our analysis concludes that both a walk and a hit gets a player on base, then both are of equal value. If our analysis proves that a walk does little to help youngsters learn how to hit a ball, then both are not of equal value. As I said, the wisdom has challenged us for a long time and when I hear those words I have to force my thinking to move on to more important things.

But then the speech took a turn for the worst.

“I’ve seen pitchers break down crying,” the coach continued. “If you let a pitcher hit you, you get on base and a lot of pitchers start crying and can’t continue pitching.” Getting hit by a pitch, it seems, is the best of both worlds in 8U baseball. Getting hit is the same as a base hit and it often knocks a pitcher out of the game.

It doesn’t get much better than that, right? It’s a win-win situation.

Another coach emphasized the point. He told his kids that college baseball teammates cheer more loudly for a player who is hit by a pitch than they do when a teammate hits a homerun. The translation for those 7- and 8-year-old children is that adults value a hit batter more than a base hit.

All this happened within earshot of my players. Damn, I thought, now I have to change my lesson plan to counteract the effects of horrible coaching.

When I gathered my guys together for our wrap-up, my message was different. I explained that there is a difference between competitive baseball and instructional baseball. There is no competitive baseball until the varsity high school team. Everything earlier in a young player’s life is instructional in nature.

My job as youth baseball coach is teaching how to play and preparing players for high school baseball. The coach of the freshman team will be tasked with preparing his players for varsity. We teach. Wins are secondary to teaching.

Alright. Now I’ve changed our premise. Wins are secondary to teaching. With that in mind, we have to re-analyze the coaching pearls I mentioned earlier.

So, is a walk as good as a base hit? Is a walk as good as a quality at-bat? Is a walk as good as the possibility of an extra-base hit? Does a young player grow as a player more if he allows himself to get hit by the pitch as opposed to work through an at-bat?

I apologize. Those are all academic questions.

Here’s a better question: Do you know what your child’s coach is teaching your child?

Welcome to This Blog

The bad news: I’m new to blogging.

All is not lost, though. I’ve got a background in writing and communications. And I’m not short on opinions.

The good news: I’ve been around youth baseball a long time.

My two sons have played a combined 14 years and countless teams. Having played as a kid, I was a curious observer for a few years before I realized that most of the well-meaning knuckleheads who tried to teach my boys couldn’t. As of this writing, I’ve coaches 10 different Little League, PONY and independent teams. And I honestly have no idea how many young players I’ve had the privilege to teach.

Like many of my contemporaries and peers, I’ve seen way too many of the bad things (and way too few of the good) in youth baseball. Most coaches I have met preach to their respective choirs, which means that they voice their opinions to any coaches or parents who already agree with them. That’s good business for them because they can attract ready-made disciples. Being less sensitive to how well or ill I am perceived, I’ll blog the truth and let the chips falls wherever they fall.

For now, here’s to happy reading and better coaching for our young players!