Changing the Mindset of a School

All excellent points. I didn’t come up thru the coaching ranks in a conventional manner. I got involved in coaching because of the inept attempts that others made with my kids. But I have been at it for over 25 years now. And I have coached every amateur age group there is to coach. Here are some things I have observed over the years. These are generalizations so take this for what it’s worth.

Parents are too lax disciplining their kids. It’s hard to impose the discipline required to run a high level baseball program on kids that aren’t disciplined at home.  And parents snowplow obstacles out of their kids way on a daily basis. As a result kids are now harder to coach than ever before and they can’t handle adversity.

Kids are softer than ever. They expect everything to be handed to them. They want the trophy before they run the race. Very few will wait their turn, even if that’s the best thing for them. Very few are realistic about their playing ability - a lot of which isn’t their fault but it’s still problematic. Almost all of them like the concept of playing college baseball, but very few have the work ethic to get there and stick it out.

With the tremendous growth in some areas many new high schools have been built - and every one of them has a head baseball coach. My contention is that the explosion of new high schools has outpaced the supply of good HS baseball coaches. The subject that the coach needs to teach usually governs the hire WAY more than the baseball resume. So schools are often forced to take whoever fits on the academic side.

I have found that most high schools have a culture. It’s usually (but not always) the same culture that is ingrained in the community. That’s certainly the case where I live. Our local HS is notorious for over involved parents and entitled kids. When a new head baseball coach was hired in 2015 I was asked to help him change the culture. And we tried. What we learned was that the community didn’t care about building a winning program. All they cared about was seeing their son in a uniform, and on the field, during his senior year. It was no concern if their son was holding a younger, more talented player back. No concern at all. The booster club drummed up false charges against the coach and got him reassigned within the district. Then brought in a puppet that they could control. I immediately disassociated with that school. and we moved  our youngest son out of that school after his freshman year. It’s one of the best decisions we ever made. Some communities refuse to let go of their dysfunction.

I coach as a volunteer because I could never put up with what HS coaches/Travel ball coaches have to deal with in today’s society. I would be fired in 15 minutes. The kids that I help I coach hard. Kids will accept hard coaching only after you gain their respect. And the best way to do that is by knowing your craft and teaching them. And showing that you care. Just showing that you care isn’t enough. You have to know what you are doing. And that’s a problem with a lot of young coaches. They may care, but if they can’t teach the game kids will not respond to them.

Everything I have called attention to would be less of a problem if we could get back to showing respect and common courtesy to those around us. Bat flips & taunts are blatant disrespect and those actions contribute. So does lighting up a stranger on social media because there will be no consequences. Doing the right thing has been discarded for doing whatever you can get away with. I am glad that I have already lived most of my life. But boy do I worry about my kids and my grandson.

@adbono I have been there and done that like you in reference to your response.  Regarding the culture, dang is it hard to change.  The last school that I coached at (After I retired and then decided to keep teaching/coaching.) I was an "interim head coach."  I didn't want to coach but the school's HC resigned a few days before practice began.  With my dad on his deathbed, they called and my dad said for me to coach those kids.  I accepted right there after dad said that.  What a horrible culture I inherited.  At one point, the AD came to me and said that they did not expect for this team to win.  They never won anything.  He needed someone to help the girls out and make it through the season in order for them to find a HC.  I told him he had hired the wrong guy for that and that we were going to win.  As I have often mentioned, my practices are intense and I am intense.  The football team stopped practice one day and the HC for the football team brought the entire team over to watch our practices.  He then started getting after his football team about their intensity and that the softball team was more intense than any of them.  Parents started showing up and complaining about how I coached.  At the end of the season, I gave my resignation as I had agreed to do.  We had their first winning season in over a decade.  At the banquet, many of the parents who complained asked me to remain as the HC.  The players wanted me to remain as the HC.  Life intervened and I had to retire from teaching.  Changing the culture of a school can be done but it is hard.  The football coach resigned midseason due to the climate and culture of this school.

When we moved across country I chose the school district based on academics. My kids were five and newborn at the time. The district was the bottom end enrollment wise of the largest classification. Sports culture can change over time. The school district has four country clubs within its boundaries. The make up of the district was about two thirds executive, one sixth middle class, one sixth other side of the tracks (there actually are tracks). The best line I heard was from the football coach, “It’s challenging recruiting off the mean streets of the country clubs.” The high school was excellent in tennis, water polo and swimming. It was a doormat in everything else. The parents owned coaches. Juniors who stunk started over soph who were good. It drove several good athletes to privates and Catholics.

Two things created change. Dad’s creating or improving youth sports created a pipeline. A young, first time AD took the job. He had been an assistant at a sports powerhouse. He fired a lot of coaches over time. He brought in on the rise assistants for their first time head coaching jobs. The AD told coaches if parents have any issues talk to him. Meetings were only held if the parent, player and coach were present. It cut out a lot of BS.

My daughter is the older child. An example of how things changed was the softball coach came to a 9/10 rec game, checked out the players and told several parents their girls needed to play more competitive softball than rec league. A dad with a daughter already playing college softball and I started a 12u ASA travel team to play in tournaments within sixty miles that summer. At 14u the softball coach used her contacts (she had played in the Big Ten) to get the players placed in prominent travel programs. In six years of middle school and high school ball they lost three conference games. The high school team won four conferences and went to states three times in four years.

Parents tried to get the softball coach fired the first couple of years. She made players cry. The AD told the parents to grow up. The coach was trying to make the players care about winning. She made them cry by chewing them out for mental mistakes and lack of hustle.

This process went on across the board. My son’s baseball team went from seventeen losing seasons in twenty years under the old coach to last place, second, first and first in the new coach’s first four seasons. He wasn’t a fan of freshman playing varsity. But my son was starting shortstop as a soph. Parents went to the AD to complain he hadn’t paid his dues yet. They were told to pound sand.

By the time my kids were in high school over eight years even the football team recruited from the mean streets of the country clubs was averaging going 8-3 heading into the playoffs. A majority of the football players were other side of the track kids. By coming through a well run, newly organized Pop Warner program they were fired up to play football. When my son was five I took him to see the high school play football. It was 35-0 at the half with a running second half clock. That all changed by the time my kids got to high school.

The football stadium, soccer stadium and basketball arena were among the best in the state even when the teams stunk. It took a long time but I read recently the baseball team is finally getting a turf field with its own locker room and indoor hitting pitching lanes.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. Socrates (469–399 B.C.)

You’ve got to wonder if part of the issue is the older generation’s perception of issues, since it seems we’ve been voicing the same complaints for the last 2,500 years – LOL!

Kidding aside, from my older perspective it does seem we have more entitlement issues these days. Couple that with everyone getting their own set of alternate facts and it all seems a bit confusing.

From a parent that never coached (I just played catch and fed soft toss), a big THANK YOU to all that have coached and continue to coach the kids out there! Parent’s like me are forever in your debt of your gift of time and effort.

Why can’t they be like we were?

Perfect in every way.

What’s the matter with kids today?

- Bye Bye Birdie, 1960

I like this discussion, and I agree with much of what has been said.

However, some of what has been said are not things that I saw in my son's program, which was successful but not outstandingly so, given that the coaches mostly have to work with whatever players they are districted.  Some years they were more successful than others, and that was true of other sports too.

Our coach ran a solid program, with good practices and (in my observation) fair use of players according to their performance. We didn't ask anything for our son, I assume our son earned what he got. I don't know what other parents did. I do know the coach was there a long time, and also that some parents, in the distant and more recent past, had problems with the way he did some things.

I will say that he didn't communicate much, either to parents (not so necessary) or to the boys (much more necessary). I entirely get that this is a defensive move (staving off second-guessing) that mostly works. If we had had a big problem, I think we could have discussed it with him. But there were definitely times when we didn't know why he was doing what he was doing.

During the pandemic my son helped with the team, and afterward said he understood and agreed with all the decisions that had to be made. Most players don't get that kind of clarity after the fact. He now views his coach as a role model, which I don't think he did at the time - certainly he was very insecure about asking the coach things when he was a student. He was a tremendously hard-working player, who, I think, would have benefited from a bit more openness by the coach - not coddling, but honest feedback.

I don't remember coddling or entitlement among any of our kids or their friends.  But maybe we were just lucky.  Or maybe the coddling crowd would have seen it differently.

The funny part is that I played 40 years ago and got a participation trophy then. It's not a new concept.

The 60- to 75-year-old group is to blame for how America is today because they created the system, profited off it, then checked out of it and acted like they had nothing to do with it. The Boomer coaches who complain the most about kids being soft and parents being entitled (or the other way around) are the ones who raised the people they're whining about. That's what is most despicable about their moaning and complaining how "things have changed". They were the ones who changed the system, and now are too cowardly to own it. 

@adbono posted:

I coach as a volunteer because I could never put up with what HS coaches/Travel ball coaches have to deal with in today’s society. I would be fired in 15 minutes. The kids that I help I coach hard. Kids will accept hard coaching only after you gain their respect. And the best way to do that is by knowing your craft and teaching them. And showing that you care. Just showing that you care isn’t enough. You have to know what you are doing. And that’s a problem with a lot of young coaches. They may care, but if they can’t teach the game kids will not respond to them.

Everything I have called attention to would be less of a problem if we could get back to showing respect and common courtesy to those around us. Bat flips & taunts are blatant disrespect and those actions contribute. So does lighting up a stranger on social media because there will be no consequences. Doing the right thing has been discarded for doing whatever you can get away with. I am glad that I have already lived most of my life. But boy do I worry about my kids and my grandson.

I agree with this 99%.  I don't really think kids are soft though,  I think kids are tired of being yelled at by people who don't know what they are doing, because some of those people think yelling equals intensity and intensity is all you need - No, you need intensity that is directed toward doing things correctly.  Baseball is a skill sport, not an aggression sport.   Kids will take the yelling if you then turn around and teach what they should be doing.  Honestly, the yelling isn't even necessary.   You can put up with a lot if you feel that coach has something to offer.  Too many don't and then turn around and blame the kids.  They aren't good enough, they aren't coach-able, etc.  I find many coaches today are about shaming more than they are about intensely getting a point across and they do it publicly to cover up or excuse their own failures in coaching.

As far as the original intent of this post, Changing a schools mindset, I assume from a losing program to a winning one.  GET A COACH WHO ACTUALLY KNOWS BASEBALL AND CAN TEACH IT.  A losing mindset is based on constantly losing and then expecting it, you can't keep the current coach and just work on mindset.

But you have to have an AD who wants to change it.  Example below.

So this is what I was told,  I can't say for a fact it's true, but knowing the town and the parents in it....

A neighboring town was looking for a new coach.  They brought in a guy to interview that had the pedigree, years of coaching a small local single team per age group (13-17u) travel program whose kids stayed in the program,  came from famous MLB family (Grandfather played, father is in HOF).  Grew up in the game and played pro ball himself  (high A and then Indy for years).  During the interview he asked about the players and what the typical level of involvement was (ie how many kids were in the program fr. jv, varsity) and when they started tryouts, etc.  The AD handed him a list and said "these are the kids who will play".  He was taken aback, "what about tryouts, etc.  I will pick my team",,  "Nope, these are the kids who will play".   He got up and left.

I agree with 99% of what adbono said, and thank him because I don’t have to type all of that up.

The one exception: I don’t worry about my kids (or grandkids, if I ever have them).  Why not worry?  Worry changes nothing.  I also raised my kid to be respectful.  And humans have a tremendous ability to survive and adapt