A youth coach's primary responsibility should be to keep kids in baseball. The way you do that is teaching skills that allow them to have success on the field. Making it fun is a big part of your job. It's easier to teach them if they're having fun while learning. But the kid has to achieve some sort of success in games. Just having fun in practice will not keep him in baseball. If the kid ain't having success during games he'll soon move on to lacrosse.
quote:Originally posted by Daque:
The neat thing is at that point you don't need to teach, just assist them to take advantage of their opportunities as they learn.
Here is an example. A kid has established himself as a willing and eager learner due in large part to your guidance. As the head coach, you are running a travel team. You play three days a week, occasionally four on weekend tournaments. The other days of the week, now that the playing part of the season has started the boys have free.
For this kid, you have provided him opportunities to play against good quaity competition and to measure himself against them. But at the same time, you have deprived him of the opportunities of practicing and improving. You have deprived him of the balance between playing and practicing necessary to develop his talents. While he is learning, you did not provide an optimum balance between playing and practicing. As a result, under your watch, his development has been stunted.
We could talk about such things as over-coaching, unproductive practices, a lack of fun, and development of the mental side of the game but I think you get the drift.