Coaching Youth Baseball- Building Champions of Sports and Life
In the eyes of a child, learning and mastering a skill or sport can either be exciting or dreaded. Much of this depends on the circumstances surrounding the learning experience. This applies to everything they learn from schoolwork to sports, to life lessons.
The Diversity of Sport Coaching
The good news is that even things that may be a bit difficult for a child can be a source of inspiration for them if it is taught and presented correctly. This is one of the most important aspects of teaching children.
That is why people who choose to coach children have the special task of introducing them to the world of competitive sports. This experience can be either a good one or a bad one for a variety of reasons. However, one of the biggest factors of how a child takes in an experience, is based on the teacher or coach they are working with.
Coaching youth baseball is a sport that has an enormous amount of diversity and can start with children before the age of five. Many kids who later go on to love this sport and play it professionally, they started out in T-Ball when they were four or five years old. It should be understood then that it is not unusual for children at the T-Ball level to become distracted and have a difficult time focusing. This is the case with almost everything four- and five-year-old’s do.
As children age, their attention span becomes more focused as does their agility, fine motor skills, and their perseverance. It is the job of the coach of a baseball team to teach their players that skills grow and evolve and are not usually just born into a person. While some children are born “gifted” in a particular sport, many become great because they had some basic raw talent that they worked and crafted and enhanced into a highly successful skill.
By the time children get into Little League baseball, they are beginning to examine more of their skill building. Their patience and perseverance are becoming more pronounced with each practice and game. Coaches at this level should understand that while playing the game at that moment is important, some of the skills they are helping to build in them will last a lifetime.
Coaches- Life and Sport Skill Building
In some cases, coaches of Little League teams may feel as if they are part coach, part teacher, part mentor and part babysitter. This is a big role for coaches and a critical stage in childhood development. Players may need to be reminded to bring their socks, cleats, uniform, and other equipment several times before it becomes a normal part of their routine. Using a catchphrase like “socks rock don’t forget your socks”, can help kids remember such a minor detail that is critical to safe play. Cleats without great socks are tough on the foot and will certainly hinder proper play.
The good news is this time period of cultivating a child’s basic skills and learning about structure and discipline will last them a lifetime. Part of sports involves so much more than learning how to play the game. While the basic skills of catching, pitching and hitting are vital to the sport, there are much greater skills children must learn in order to be a good player.
Little League baseball is widely acknowledged as the beginning of fine-tuning players physical motor skills and hand-eye coordination. However, it is also a significant time period to learn about stamina, perseverance, self-discipline, team spirit, good sportsmanship, humility, self-esteem and the beginning of building maturity. That is why having the responsibility of coaching kids in Little League is challenging, vitally important and highly rewarding.
As a child begins to learn the physical skills they need to play the sport to the best of their ability, it is also a vital time for a coach to help encourage the mental and emotional growth as well. Team spirit helps them to understand that all of their peers help to win a game, not just one person. Good sportsmanship teaches them that all players have value on their team and other teams whether they win or lose.
All of these lessons are life skills that can help define who they become as adults and are the attributes of some of the best baseball players in the world. Perseverance skills help them to overcome their weaknesses and strive to be a better player. If the player is good enough to potentially go on to play the sport in a more professional capacity, they will take these skills and apply it in ways that will help them garner the attention of collegiate recruiters. All these critical life skills they gain in their youth will carry them through decades of life lessons beyond baseball. They are character building interactions that help them become better and happier human beings.
