It is January–Time for Baseball Sign-ups

I love January. It’s the month before February and February in Southern California, even though it is the rainy season, is when Little League teams are drafted and the first practices of the season are held.   Regardless of calendar declarations to the contrary, that first practice is the real official first  day of Spring.  In the field strawberries are turning red and in the evenings baseball teams practice in  every park.  The rest of the nation may be moribund in winter snow but the grass is green in Ventura, California.

Baseball is a rite of Spring.  It is a rite of passage for every boy and girl. Bubblegum,  sunflower seeds and base hits are what life is all about.  It doesn’t matter whether you are a participant or a proud parent cheering from thirty year old, rusty, rickety stands.  For many those stands supported  your grandparents who long ago  cheered for your mom or dad.

Where should your son or daughter be on March 1, or April 1 if you live in the Northern States?  Baseball practice.   And afterwards?   It’s hot dogs, mustard, and relish and for dessert it’s McDonalds for those soft ice cream cups with nuts, whipped cream, and a spoon.  It is the rite of Spring.  So sign up.  If money is a problem in these recessionary times every little league has scholarship programs.  Just ask.  Baseball is what we live for and remember forever.  It’s spring.  It’s baseball and nothing could be better.

Choose Soccer for Fun

Is your child the normal sort?  Does she or he like to run about, climb on the monkey bars, swing about the merry-go-round and loves a ball.  Which team sport are you going to sign him/her up for?  I recommend soccer.  Why soccer?  In the world of soccer there is room for everyone.  Everyone plays.  That is the great attribute of youth sports.  You don’t have to be good to play.  Skill level is not a factor.  Players are rotated in and out according to specific guidelines.  Each player gets at least half a game to get a foot on the ball. And when they do?  The whole family goes to CHUCK E CHEESE.

Soccer is an easy game to learn.  The young beginner can learn it easily, both by practicing the drills, and by observation.  Most of the younger teams play a version my husband and I like to call “swarm soccer.”  We are amused and delighted by the efforts these young players give to just getting the ball down the field, all together.  There is generally little or no passing, and the strategies and skills of the older player are still a few years off.   But the team does drive the ball down the field, and everyone is part of scoring a goal.

The health benefits of soccer are these:  increased fitness due to the nearly constant motion and activity required by running up and down the field.   I have heard it called a heart-healthy game.  Increased strength, flexibility and endurance are a few other benefits of this sport.  Playing outdoors is also a big plus.  Improved coordination results.

Soccer is a good team learning experience.  Learning how to be part of a team takes practice.   Making friends, practicing passing drills, being part of a team effort, the young player learns that life is not a solitary journey.  The young player will begin to appreciate the concept of sharing the ball and receiving help as a positive aspect of winning.

Soccer requires little more than a ball and a few friends.  It can be played one’s whole life.  In time, the game becomes more complex, the skill levels more advanced.  Enrolling your child in a program that is carefully managed, with the focus on the child’s enjoyment and development will yield long-term benefits, both physically and mentally.

The Mental Side of a Winning Athlete

The Mental Side Of Winning

The most forgotten side of coaching athletics is mental.  Yet the mental side of coaching will yield the most positive results of any coaching you will do.  It will give positive results quicker with less coaching than any other single set of techniques.   Despite its great value, it is forgotten, often disregarded, not to mention lost and hidden behind teaching physical skills.

At its very foundation the mental side of any sport is being and thinking positive.  A word of warning: Beware of this simplistic definition because the negative often camouflages the positive.  Here is an example: In shooting free throws the athlete often approaches the task saying to himself, “I gotta make this shot” and he or she’s very positive in this affirmation.  This is, however, a negative, and is counter productive.  The chances are increased that the shot will be missed.  Instead of relaxing and letting the shot just happen, the muscles will invariably tense up and the difficulty of the exercise will increase.  “I gotta, I have to, If I don’t make this shot I’ll just die . . . “, are all negatives and are to be avoided.

On the positive side, the athlete will approach the foul line, receive the ball from the referee, then begin his or her ritual, by bouncing the ball a proscribed number of times or none at all, eye the basket, indeed, eye a particular part of the basket.  During this ritual, he will be reviewing in his mind exactly how he makes this shot, remembering successful feelings of making the shot, mentally saying “this is how I take this shot.”   He should then release the ball to the basket without allowing another thought to enter the mind.   The statistical probability of making the shot will increase dramatically depending in part on the particular skill level of the athlete.  Note, the mental side is taught.  It doesn’t just happen.  It, like all muscle memory exercises, must be repeated as often as possible.

The same mental preparedness is true of a soccer player about to kick a penalty shot or a batsman about to address a sixty-mile-an-hour curve ball.  The simple mental preparation is accomplished as the athlete reviews how he performs the task successfully.  This mental preparation in conjunction with physical repetition, i.e., doing a task perfectly, yields fantastic results.

The second and equally important portion of mental preparedness comes directly from the coach himself.  Praise profusely and loudly and do it sincerely.   Your athletes need to know you approve of them.  Every athlete has something to praise, even if it is merely showing up.  Find it, praise it loudly, and reap the results.  Athletes tend to perform up to or down to the coach’s announced expectations.

5 SIMPLE REASONS TO PLAY SPORTS

1. HEALTHY ACTIVITY IS A BIG PLUS. Laying the foundation for a physically active life is one of the great benefits of early participation in sports.  Young children are primed for movement.  Running, jumping, skipping, hopping, whirling in circles, standing on their heads, doing cartwheels, chasing, and wrestling, it seems they never stand or sit still.  Discovering just what they like doing best will help you determine what sports will be fun for them.  It sounds funny to me now, but I had a two-year-old who loved to stand on her head, and sit in a chair upside down, even while watching TV.  When she was 3 years old I enrolled her in a community gymnastics class that met once a week.  Ten years later she was a gymnast with a big smile, and ten years after that a professional dancer in a modern dance company.  Just last week, in a lull in our holiday activities, I watched her do a handstand in the living room.  No one paid any attention.  It’s just part of who she is.
2. PARTICIPATION IN A SPORT DEVELOPS SKILLS. Learning how to chase a ball, swing a bat, take a shot, ride a skate board, swing a racket, or walk a balance beam takes a good amount of specific skills.  The coordination alone that is developed in pursuing a sport will be a big plus.  Physical and mental skills are formed as young athletes learn drills, and strategies for their sport.
3. BEING ON A TEAM TEACHES A GROUP DYNAMIC. Learning to be part of a team requires thinking outside of oneself.  This is a very important and necessary lesson that has far reaching affects off the playing field.  The description “team player” is one that is often considered in assessing successful work attributes.  Commitment and dependability are necessary to a winning team, whether you are 10 or 35.
4. ATHLETES LEARN SELF-DISCIPLINE. Self-discipline is inherent in the “team player” concept.  It is also learned as an athlete practices his or her sport.  Accountability for that practice can be taught.  We did something that may seem very weird.  We paid our kids to practice.  Before you jump out of your skin at that thought, let me assure you that it wasn’t very much.  They each had a small notebook and they logged in the time they spent practicing their skills.  My husband grew up on a farm and had daily family chores; hard work beyond the cleaning your room and making your bed stuff.  It was outdoor physical labor.  The closest we could get to creating that kind of daily physical effort was through practicing their sport on their own each day, whether it was practicing free throws, or throwing a ball.
5. SPORTS PROVIDE OPPORTUNITIES FOR FUN. Let’s not forget fun!  There has to be fun involved, whether it’s the thrill of kicking a ball, or a nice hit.  Part of the fun is the family’s attendance, and cheering.  Sometimes the fun involves celebrating a double play or a goal made.  The satisfaction of winning the race or executing an excellent cartwheel is also a part of the fun.  We remember the fun a long, long time.

Coach’s Meeting – Most Important Meeting of All – Part 1

I coached soccer for 18 years, managed little league baseball teams for 17 years, and coached approximately 20 basketball teams.  There is one meeting that’s a must and that leads to success.  Its absence leads to steep walls to climb, additional, multiple hurdles to clear.  It is the coach’s meeting with parents and players.  I have done it both ways: had them and ignored them, and suffered the consequences for not having them.  If I could do it over,  I’d always have them.   This meeting is the first step to a successful season.  The meeting should be held in your home before the first practice.  Both parents and the player need to be present. Stress its importance when you first contact the player and parents.  Here’s what needs to be covered at this meeting:

• Your introduction.  Introduce yourself.  Give your philosophy on coaching; what you hope to achieve.  It shouldn’t be winning.  It should be teaching and learning to play a game.

• The number of practices to be held each week.  This varies with the age of the team you are coaching.

• The location of the practices.

• Who will be present.  Never coach alone.  If you have no assistants to help you, then work out a program for a least one parent to be there at all times.  Why?   If someone is injured, who will take him or her to the emergency room?   Besides, you’ll need at least two people to help you at every practice.  Remember, get the parents involved.   Teach your assistant to coach.   The more involvement you can get, the more you success you’ll experience.

• Dates and times of the practices.  Stress coming to practice on time.  Inform parents and athletes of the consequences of missing practice, or of coming late to practice.  Discussing this will enable parents to work together to get their athletes to practice on time.  Again, the more assistance you get the greater opportunity for success.   If a player is not going to be at practice, require that the player, and not the parent, call to inform you of the situation.  Remember, you are teaching player responsibility not parental responsibility.  Practices are not practices unless everyone is present.  Stress this.

There’s more to discuss.  Follow me to Part 2.

FAQ #1

The question we asked ourselves, and were most frequently asked was, what is the best age to sign our child up for sports.

While it is true that you can sign your child up from a very young age, we always advise against it.  We started out with AYSO soccer, one of the most child-friendly organizations we know.  Anxious to begin we signed up our 5 year son and a year later our 5 year old daughter to play on soccer teams.  They were eager at first.  But generally, a 5 year old, on his own, doesn’t have the required self-discipline, social interaction skills, or the attention span to be successful in organized sports.   That means that you will have to supply these elements–often an uphill task.

We found that one practice a week might fly, provided something more interesting wasn’t claiming their attention.  But 2 and 3 practices were just too many.  Incentives needed to be provided to improve social interactions.  Lots of feedback about how to behave, or how to work together as a team is necessary.  If you have attended games with very young players, you have either been one of the parents, or have watched parents, who could barely keep themselves from running out onto the field to help their child follow, kick, or block a ball. The shouts of encouragement, though deafening, are certainly necessary.  And you still will have young athletes sitting down in the goal as they wait for action to return to their part of the field, or engaged in studying their shoes, or the gopher holes in the ground.  The best part of the games for these young athletes might just be the intermission oranges, and the after game treats.  Those are very important aspects.

Once we discovered that our goal of a positive and successful sports experience had gone awry, we reassessed our participation approach.  We learned that 7 was the magic age.  By the age of 7 the youth athlete has two very significant things going for her.  One is two years of experience in a very structured organization–school.  The other is  improved coordination.  Now he has the beginnings of appropriate social behavior and improved physical abilities.  He or she has a greater chance of success, and, with your support, will have the confidence to learn and develop their skills. Going to practices and playing the game will be activities they enjoy and can anticipate with zest.