Okay, everyone tell me this won't be the trainwreck I'm fearing...
Last season my son's HS program was headed by a well respected and really knowledgeable coach. He was hired away by a local high end private school for a pretty good chunk of change. While he was running the program, he had two assistants - one who was a current minor league player who was out for his season due to injury - and one who played professionally for about 15 years between the minors and Latin American leagues. The same coaches also handled the JV squad. Everything was tightly run. The team had a great season, and made it out of districts for the first time in about 15 years.
When the coach stepped down he was replaced by a guy who played ACC ball, was drafted in the middle rounds and played for a few years in the minors. His only coaching experience was as an assistant freshman team coach at a local private HS. He has brought in six new assistant coaches, who are apparently all friends of his. Experience ranging from HS players to college players. They aren't consistent on who will be there for practices or games - and are frequently giving the players conflicting advice/corrections/assignments. From watching games I get the feeling that half the time they don't even know the players by name.
The fall season ended last week and they had an end of the season meeting yesterday. The coaches met with the players individually and discussed the past season and what their plans were for the player for the upcoming season.
My 2017 son had missed last spring due to injury and had intended to use the fall to work out the kinks with new pitching mechanics. He was for the most part the #1 pitcher on the JV squad. About half way through the season the coaches asked him to move to catcher because they were very weak at the position. There is a strong senior catcher in the program, but the junior backup had been having some injury issues - and the underclassmen were really not all that good. No problem, my son caught part time for his summer team, and grew up as a catcher. He was a little rusty, but still easily the #3 catcher behind the senior and junior. All of sudden he started hitting the crap out of the ball as well. He pitched occasionally. A little inconsistent with command, but when he was on, he carved up batters pretty easily. (Well, JV batters so not a big accomplishment)
Anyway, at the exit meeting the coaches tell him that they love the way he is hitting. They are also liking how he is coming along on the mound. Most likely he will move up to varsity for the spring because they really like his bat. This is all great in theory. Then they tell him that they would rather not have him catch (okay I guess), but they want to have him start working at first base. Here's the thing - my son has never played first base in his life. He sucks at reading ground balls. To top it off he is a 5'10 righty. The biggest head scratcher is this - playing ahead of him at first is a 2017 6'5 lefty who hits like a beast (Getting some serious DI attention already), and a 2017 6'2 lefty who isn't far behind. That's not to mention at least 5 other guys who have actually played the position before.
When my son told me they wanted him to work at first my first words were, "Do they know they have so and so on their team?" He's hoping somebody will figure that out by the time the season rolls around.
Of course the biggest problem is that the program has a large and loud booster club with parent's that have become accustomed to last year's success. Honestly we don't have the horses this year regardless, but the disjointed way things are going so far doesn't look to be helping the situation. I can already see the writing on the wall if the team struggles.