Coach

My 2 Cents: You gave him the best advice you could have given him. Young men (and women) need to develop communication skills and not rely on Mom & Pop to go "Slay the Dragon" It will be a learning experience for your son as well as the Coach.

Great Advice! Encourage him to handle it and make sure he separates the emotion from the discussion. Have him seek clarity from the coach on what he needs to improve on. My experience leads me to believe there is more to this than you are being told. Pry a little deeper.

I assume he is a Fresh. or Soph. so make sure he understands it is not the end of the world.

ummm, move to another district?
Happens all over & frequently.
Just don't do it for "athletic reasons" or UIL will be all over it!
Maybe a foreign language, or closer to work, or downsizing, or inlaw issues, or other "special needs"...Folks use lots of "reasons"...

Vanland is correct, though. He should talk it out with Coach.

quote:

I assume he is a Fresh. or Soph. so make sure he understands it is not the end of the world.

I am making the same assumption.

IF, that is the case, then son and dad need to learn that high school teams play TWO games a week contrasted with TEN on a long tournament weekend of select ball.

The demand for pitchers is different for select and high school.

A high school team can get by with two pitchers.

The young pitchers have to show the coach they can throw against the JV hitters first.

And, if they are not gonna pitch the varsity games, the best thing for them to do is throw JV innings.

Juiceless....since he plays for a top select team in the summer don't worry about it. The summer is where the "real" athletes shine. I am sure your summer team coaches are much better than your HS coach as I have typically seen as well. I am not saying all HS coaches are bad but summer is where its at.

Since he is lefty keep throwing him and getting his arm ready for the summer and attitude as well. After a great summer his HS coach will find out that he is the man!

PS: We can use a lefty 85plus pitcher in Coppell!! Good luck and keep his attitude positive

Good advice, just don't let him get his hopes up that anything will change.

bmom and train, nice thoughts however, I am more into making certain my son gets a quality education (which his HS provides and then some). I am not one of these parents who thinks my kid is going to play at the next level. If he does, great. However, I know that some day his education will put $$$$ in his pocket, I don't think those $$$ will come from playing baseball. All that being said, I do want him to enjoy his baseball experiences and right now he isn't. As some others mentioned there may be more to this than I know...

A young man named Paul Thorp played for Newman Smith in the late 90's. He was a third baseman and pitched as well yet he rarely got any mound time in HS because he had two outstanding LHP in front of him in Shane Wallace and Bryan Stamp. All three played summer ball for us.

To make a long story short, Paul came into his own as a pitcher sometime between his junior and senior years but didn't get to really prove it until the summer after his senior year. That summer Paul was a dominant pitcher and the last week of July 1999 he signed what amounted to a full ride to Baylor (that's a late commitment by any standard). Paul pitched for three years at Baylor and then was drafted by the Yankees after his junior year. He's now a solid closer for them in AA Trenton.

Just one of many similar stories I could share. Hang in there. If it's meant to happen your son will get his chances.

juiceless, you have a PM.

we find ourselves in a very similar situation. I too told my son to talk to the coach and find out what he needs to work on. Coach made some promises to my son that they have not followed through on. Talking to the coach is not always the answer. Depending on the coach it can make matter worse.

My advise to my son was/is to keep working hard, have a good attitude, do whatever is asked of him and remember, his select team does appreciate him and maybe one day the high school coach will see what everyone else does. if not, it is his problem, not my sons.

we do private lessons at the select teams facility once a week and feel much better after being around real baseball people.

by the way, my son is top 5% of his class, 4.25 GPA in honors classes. Baseball is not his only interest either.

Some great advice.
You seem to have the right attitude. I would be cautious as well about your son talking to the coach.
He should go out and shpw the coach what he is made of. Great attitude and great talent will get him where he wants to go.
Most pitchers have their bumps in the road.

screwball, juiceless, et al

My son's HS baseball experience ranged from good to OK. Summer select programs were far more valuable to him competitively, and in recruiting exposure.

Like you, education is a very important value in our family. Dut don't minimize the impact baseball can have on where your son eventually ends up attending college.

My son is a pretty good baseball player, but not a well known 'standout' among local observers. He also had excellent HS grades & was in the top 20 graduates (not a percentage there) of a large senior class. His grades and academic extra curricular activites qualified him for admission to many schools. His BASEBALL accomplishments got him noticed by college coaches in the Ivy League, where he eventually decided to attend Dartmouth. Without the baseball resume his admission application is just a speck in a sea of thousands of applicants. Baseball is what set him apart from the other 99.5% of applicants. (That, and his coach's sponsorship of application )

So, encourage your sons to continue in the game and work hard. The game may lead your son to Stanford, or Rice, or Princeton, or maybe even Dartmouth.

quote:

My son is a pretty good baseball player

This is an understatement.

For those that don't know him, Jason McManis is an outstanding ballplayer and plays shortstop for the Dartmouth Big Green. On Wednesday he went 2-4 with two runs scored and two rbis in a 7-1 win over Siena.

Proud to know him.

Congrats to Jason

DBAT18GM:
Outstanding post and great example. I bet there are a lot of players and parents out there that will benefit from this post.

Thank you.

I think he should show the coach he is committed to the high school program 1st. Alot of you guys think summer ball is "where its at"
well it depends on what "where its at" means.

If you want to play baseball at a higher level and play against good people all the time then select ball promotes this type of atmosphere.

what it doesnt promote in most cases is how well kids can function in a structured environment with some kind of discipline.

The one thing we all seem to forget is that to play select ball you have to pay your way on the team. Hence, most select coaches will tell you what you want to hear and this creates a false sense of how good a kid really is.Also in select ball most of the coaches jobs do not hinge on whether they make the play-offs or not.


As a high school coach I would like to have kids that I can trust and feel certain that they are going to do what is best for our program because my job depends on how well these kids can execute my game plan. It is not neccesarily how good the player is, but it is how good the team is when this player is in the line-up..

In select ball it is irrelevant how good the team plays for the most part. Im not saying in every select program that winning is not important but for most it is about development of players (or it should be).

High school coaches dont want to lose games, and if they dont care about winning games then that is a completely different situation. I would think that you as a parent could see if the program your son plays in is legit or it is just a waste of time for your son. I dont have the answer for you if the coach doesnt have an interest in his own program.

Again I would think if your kid worked harder than anyone else and he made an effort in his practices to show the coaches he wants to play. Then this would probably help his chances to get what he wants in high school basebll.
It wouldnt hurt to stay after and get extra ground balls or get some extra work in the cages as well.

Coaches like kids that work hard and deserve to be successful due to the time and effort that they put into their high school program.


I can see why some high school coaches have a problem with kids that have the attitude of "well lets just wait until summer ball so we can have some fun" WINNING IS FUN IN HIGH SCHOOL.


just one mans opinion

quote:

Originally posted by juiceless:
Situation, Son plays for one of the top select organizations in the metroplex. Lefty pitcher, select coaches state he has tremendous talent and will be one of the main guys on the hill this summer. HS Coach doesn't give him the time of day, slotted him on JV and states he doesn't like his windup. Son is getting very frustrated and stated last night that his coaches were beginning to make him hate baseball. I have told him to go have a discussion with his coach, that his father can't take care of everything for him. Good advice or stupdity?

Sorry your son is frustrated, baseball is a great game and it is meant to be fun. As a high school baseball coach, I would hope that your son's coach would be open-minded enough to sit down and listen to your son.

I will speak for myself in that, everyone of my kids in my program from Varsity to the Freshman, know what their role is. Now, they may not necessarily agree with it and their parents may not agree with it, but they know where they stand. At the end of this season I will sit down with each one of them individually and give them offseason goals and what my expectations are for them for next year...but I make no promises.

As someone stated earlier, with their being only 2 district games a week, I can get by with only 2-3 pitchers at this time of year. I have some talented juniors and freshman pitchers on my JV team. They are good, but not as good as the kids I have pitching for me right now. I have told them that they will be counted on next year and to work on everything they need to work on as a pitcher on the JV team. More importantly, my JV coach does what I ask him to do, so those kids are coming along very well. We will graduate all the pitchers I am using in district play, but I feel good about the 4 kids we've been using on the JV team. One of the Freshman threw a 4 hit complete game win in a varsity tournament earlier this year and one of the juniors threw real well in a few varsity scrimmages.

Sorry for rambling, but you or your son can't control what your HS coach thinks and does. What he can control is his work ethic and attitude. If he is a pup (Freshman) or a Sophomore, then he has lots of time left to make an impact on varsity. I hope everything works out for you.

quote:

For those that don't know him, Jason McManis is an outstanding ballplayer and plays shortstop for the Dartmouth Big Green. On Wednesday he went 2-4 with two runs scored and two rbis in a 7-1 win over Siena

There are observers that had observed that.