joes87 posted:coach2709 posted:Nothing like a good coach bashing thread. Haven't seen one in a while. One thing I've learned in my over 20 years of coaching high school and last 5 as AD is that the ones who spout off about politics are typically the parents of the kids on the bench. I have never witnessed a starter say anything about politics.
Now before too many people get worked up I readily admit there are some clowns out there who do not need to be coaching. My best friends son's HS team got beat in playoffs last night. Had a 5-1 lead in the top of the 7th, whole game used 4 total pitchers, used a kid who has 11 innings this year as a Freshman and out of the 4 none were his best pitcher. Then after the game he tells the guys he did everything he could to win the game. Sadly, these guys exist and I have no clue if this is the rule or the exception. Nobody on here does. What's frustrating is you let your situation dictate that it's that way for everyone especially if it's slanted. If you have a great HS coach then enjoy it and get the most out of it. If you have an average HS coach then enjoy it and get the most out of it. If you have a bad HS coach then try to find something enjoyable out of it and get the most out of it. Do you see a theme building? No matter what situation you are in it's up to you to make the best of it although it's a LOT easier when you have good coaching. If all you do is complain and play the victim then guess what? The world is out to get you and there's nothing you can do about it.
I"m not calling anyone in particular out but I've been on the receiving end of the vicious parents who were wrong. I had to change the culture of that school from a toxic and parent controlled environment so I was raked through the coals. I left there as the most successful coach in that school's history but in some of their eyes I was an idiot who held the team back. I absolutely made mistakes but I believe I did more good than bad. Relax and enjoy the ride because there is a LOT more to baseball than just high school ball. I love HS ball and I will defense HS coaches in cases where I think they are right but it's not the end of the world if you sit the bench in HS. Glass half empty - you're getting screwed and the coach is stupid. Glass half full - you have an opportunity to work through adversity, develop into a good team mate and increase your work ethic if you want to try and play.
On paper is seems simple.
What I did not get into in my above post about controlling what you can control is my kid getting benched this year. It was for 3 games and it seemed like an eternity. We could have blamed the coach, we could have blamed politics, but in reality he was not hitting well. He wasn't the only one (the majority of the team was batting under .200 at that time), but he was the one the coach choose to bench. Went from a .395 BA at the end of last year to hitting .190 after the first 4 games of this years season. I just went back and looked and he actually played in those 3 games, just didn't start. He took every advantage given to him when he was put into those games and worked his way back into the lineup. Finished up the season batting around .320 and garnered an All Conference honor. If he would have allowed himself to be distracted by the "politics" argument he would not have worked himself back into the lineup.
Hitting .190 after 3 or 4 games is NOTHING. Not a sign of ANYTHING in particular. That is a TINY sample size that is statistically INSIGNIFICANT. Suppose you have 10 AB's in say 4 7 inning games and you have only 2 hits. You are batting .200. One more game, you go 2 for 3. Suddenly you have a whopping 4 hits in 13 AB's. Now you are hitting a whopping .308.
Any coach that benches a kid because of what happens in 3 or 4 games is basically an IDIOT. (unless he can definitely see that the results are due to basic flaws in the swing or a terrible approach)
Part of the problem is that with HS almost the entire season is just a small sample which contains precious little statistically valid information. But for bench guys, who only get sporadic chances, the tyranny of small sample size is greatly magnified.