Liking the coaches???? If you get into coaching to be liked you have a problem. You can't please everybody and if you coach and that is what you try to do don't be surprised by the results.
Francis, your observations do not apply to Scott Bradley - Princeton's long time HC.
While I didn't initially understand the lack of absolute committment to winning, his committment to developing men ready for the real world outside of baseball won me over. For the men who aspired to proball, however, he was ready anytime to devote himself to their development.
Mid-terms? Practice voluntary. But, any player wanting to work on skills during that period, he was there anytime of the day.
He was a realist who recognized that the team's only path to the college post-season was through the league championship. His players - and there was virtually zero attrition - keep touch with him well into their working careers. Oh, and all except those drafted/signed after junior year, graduated in 4 years. The juniors heading to proball took an extra semester to graduate.
That is the definition of a coach who puts academics first.
@lasorda12345 posted:Agree, no need to be a buddy to my son. However, a person making over 100k for coaching baseball should have the capability of communicating on a certain level. If he is giving my son a scholarship shouldnt he expect to have answers and constructive criticism.
Try the ones making over 1M….
@Francis7 I would say your list is true for some coaches. Hard to paint everyone with a broad brush. I think the system rewards this type of coach so it’s hard to not be one. The coach that comes to mind most prominently though, you would have been hard pressed to find anyone on the team, or parents, who were still drinking the koolaid. We never had a buddy coach in travel or hs, so didn’t expect that. As I’ve said before, in our 3rd year, rose colored glasses are off.
@Goosegg posted:Francis, your observations do not apply to Scott Bradley - Princeton's long time HC.
While I didn't initially understand the lack of absolute committment to winning, his committment to developing men ready for the real world outside of baseball won me over. For the men who aspired to proball, however, he was ready anytime to devote himself to their development.
Mid-terms? Practice voluntary. But, any player wanting to work on skills during that period, he was there anytime of the day.
He was a realist who recognized that the team's only path to the college post-season was through the league championship. His players - and there was virtually zero attrition - keep touch with him well into their working careers. Oh, and all except those drafted/signed after junior year, graduated in 4 years. The juniors heading to proball took an extra semester to graduate.
That is the definition of a coach who puts academics first.
FWIW, Princeton is a different animal. You're not getting into Princeton because of baseball. You make the Princeton team because you were good enough to get into Princeton AND you happen to have some baseball skills.
@Francis7 posted:FWIW, Princeton is a different animal. You're not getting into Princeton because of baseball. You make the Princeton team because you were good enough to get into Princeton AND you happen to have some baseball skills.
I think that you are wrong on this. The better you are at your sport the better your chance of getting into an Ivy to play your sport. There are limits on how bad of a student you can but if you are good enough at your sport you can absolutely get in easier than almost anyone but the largest of donors and legacies. I know kids accepted at Ivy's and playing at Ivy's with a sub 3.0 and a 27 ACT. Zero shot those kids could have gotten in without their sport.
Francis … Your list is very negative. Why are you dwelling on the negative especially if it doesn’t apply to your son? I had two kids go through the journey in baseball and softball. A list like yours never came to mind. Having played myself I didn’t warn them to watch out for these things. Every piece of advice I gave them was about coach’s expectations and positive. This doesn’t mean life was perfect. But they dealt with what arose. They didn’t consider what might happen that never happened.
@used2lurk posted:I think that you are wrong on this. The better you are at your sport the better your chance of getting into an Ivy to play your sport. There are limits on how bad of a student you can but if you are good enough at your sport you can absolutely get in easier than almost anyone but the largest of donors and legacies. I know kids accepted at Ivy's and playing at Ivy's with a sub 3.0 and a 27 ACT. Zero shot those kids could have gotten in without their sport.
Not at Princeton. I have been there at their open house. They said that you have to get into Princeton FIRST and that no one gets in just because of athletics. FWIW they also said that you could have a 1600 on your SAT and that alone won't get you into Princeton. They are very selective on who gets in and why.
Tik Tok made by the Yale baseball team -
I know that no one gets into Princeton/Harvard/Yale "just because of athletics". My point is that there are lower thresholds for athletes to get in to Princeton and other of the most prestigious Ivy's (I would say that Harvard & Yale are in the same boat). I know several kids who played sports at Princeton and I know about their process and academic record (and struggles in some cases). All that struggled were elite at their sport and could have played at nearly all of the top 10 schools in their sport.
I agree on a 1600 or 36 ACT student not necessarily getting in on that alone.
@Francis7 posted:Not at Princeton. I have been there at their open house.
I certainly believe that could be what Princeton said "at their open house" but I believe what they say in public and do in private is different. It is possible that the landscape has changed the last 2 years but I know the way it was when my kids and their peers were in the recruiting cycle. Everyone has academic thresholds to reach in order to get in and there are kids on teams that have very high thresholds to get in to Princeton (and also make the team) and others have much lower thresholds.
I have been around a lot of college coaches and you are wrong. There are very few who have your mentality fully. But my question is "What is a university paying a college coach to do in any sport?" WIN. You don't win you should be fired. I know some will say that is wrong but I don't think it is. You are there to WIN games, championships. I don't think a win at all cost is right but your job as a coach is to win. If you believe otherwise I would ask the same question of a teacher/professor. What is their job? To get students to make good grades. If they are failing half of their class each semester then they should be fired. Winning on the field and teaching in the classroom is very similar. I also don't understand why anyone would want to play for a coach who did not play his best players. If a better player comes along, he should play. I think the problem is in HS sports where some play everyone. That is where the best playing should start. Rec ball is for playing everyone. Not travel ball or HS and certainly not college.
Princeton, Yale, and the rest of the Ivys aren't taking in kids that can get into the school academically but are mediocre at baseball. The teams are full of D1 players that could play at other D1 schools, maybe not P5 in most cases, but they are very good ball players. Take a look at Columbia and Upenn's records from last year.
Francis, your posts almost always are veiled to suggest that they don’t relate directly to your son. Yet they always read that you are describing a situation that DOES have to do with your son. The ambiguity is not helpful. Just an observation.
Regarding your list, I would say that if any of the items you noted come as a surprise to you then you didn’t do your homework very well before signing up. Coaching (any sport) is a very competitive profession. And there are more good coaches than there are paid spots for them. So college sports are getting more and more business oriented every day. It’s not a feel good experience on a daily basis from the perspective of a player. The “feel good” for the player comes from hard work and personal improvement. Not from a warm and fuzzy coaching staff. That’s not what they are paid for. Parents should know that by now.
I agree with TPM that most coaches are concerned with the overall maturation of all their players. While they may not be super friendly, many coaches do things every day (that parents never hear about) to help players grow and evolve. And they do that with an eye on that player being successful in life after he is done playing. One of those things is holding players accountable for their words and actions. Essentially it’s an extension of parenting. But if a player has grown up without being held accountable at home (as so many in the past 20 years have) it leads to conflict when coaching staffs try to make them grow up. There is no doubt that some coaches take it too far and I have talked a lot about that in previous posts. But the more time I spend around 18 & 19 year old JuCo players the more I understand why they do.
Wasn't this about approach-ability and communication? You have to treat needs for communication, like the military, chain of command. first stop and last stop is your position coach. he's the guy who knows you, the guy who works with you. The head coach has far more pressing things on his mind and frankly he's getting all the info on who can and can't play from his assistants, until he sees it for himself in games. if you aren't starting, he probably barely knows you. If you can't get anywhere with the position coach, you most likely need to move on. Because you can't go around the position coach to the top, that's suicide. If the position coach gives you a ton of things to work on, then you better work on them. Most players I assume are recruited based on where you can be in 2 years, typically the praise about how great you are during recruiting is based on HS not college, so that should not play into your reasoning for playing time.
So whether a head coach is approachable or communicating well to you as a player, is really inconsequential because you shouldn't be going to him in the first place. Even if he is a guy who says he has an open door policy, you still better go through your position coach.
I played for two different head coaches in college in the late 80's. 1 called me Tall Guy for an entire year because he didn't know my name, the other maybe said two words to me in two seasons, and I'm pretty sure they weren't all that nice.
@Francis7 posted:Not at Princeton. I have been there at their open house. They said that you have to get into Princeton FIRST and that no one gets in just because of athletics. FWIW they also said that you could have a 1600 on your SAT and that alone won't get you into Princeton. They are very selective on who gets in and why.
EVERY Ivy has different standards for athletes and general applicants. I would bet my house there isn't a recruited 1600 SAT on an Ivy roster right now. I heard at least 3 Ivy coaches this summer tell kids they needed a 1250 SAT to get through admissions with coach support.
There are only a handful of schools that hold athletes to the same academic standard as general applicants; Caltech, MIT, JHU, UChicago, CMS, Pomona/Pitzer, and I believe WashU.
@SpeedDemon posted:Tik Tok made by the Yale baseball team -
Guy in the Pirate hoodie must throw 95+.
@PitchingFan posted:I have been around a lot of college coaches and you are wrong. There are very few who have your mentality fully. But my question is "What is a university paying a college coach to do in any sport?" WIN. You don't win you should be fired. I know some will say that is wrong but I don't think it is. You are there to WIN games, championships. I don't think a win at all cost is right but your job as a coach is to win. If you believe otherwise I would ask the same question of a teacher/professor. What is their job? To get students to make good grades. If they are failing half of their class each semester then they should be fired. Winning on the field and teaching in the classroom is very similar. I also don't understand why anyone would want to play for a coach who did not play his best players. If a better player comes along, he should play. I think the problem is in HS sports where some play everyone. That is where the best playing should start. Rec ball is for playing everyone. Not travel ball or HS and certainly not college.
Interesting comparison, but I disagree with your premise. Teachers are not there to "get students to make good grades," they are there to teach students to learn and improve. Grades should reflect that, but "good" is relative - a student who starts by making Ds and ends up making Bs has improved, and may have learned a lot, even though the final grade is a C. Is that a teaching "win" or a "loss"? Neither, because there is no comparison - no other student who is actively trying to make the student fail (also, I'm sure that if teachers got to pick their students, the grades would be a lot better).
By the same token, I would say that coaches should be there to teach - baseball, life skills, whatever - and if they do their job, wins should be the consequence; but, maybe "wins" in baseball are, like grades, not so clear-cut, either.
But a student who makes F fails and if it is most of the class it is the teacher not the students. I say that with full respect for teachers, wife and mother. If the majority of your class is failing, you aren't teaching. If your team is losing a majority of the time, you aren't doing something right. Could be recruiting, could be coaching, could be hiring the right assistants, could be not a good game situational coach. But bottom line is teachers are there to get students to learn which is teaching and coaches are there to win which is coaching.
All of the other things are the passion for the position. Making them better men is part of it but if you don't win you won't be there long enough to make them better men.
When I talk to college athletes, which is daily, I find that the coaches they love the most are not always the friendliest but the ones that help them get where they want to be. They love that those are the guys who normally care for them as individuals as well as their athleticism but they appreciate that they made them better.
@PitchingFan posted:But a student who makes F fails and if it is most of the class it is the teacher not the students. I say that with full respect for teachers, wife and mother. If the majority of your class is failing, you aren't teaching. If your team is losing a majority of the time, you aren't doing something right. Could be recruiting, could be coaching, could be hiring the right assistants, could be not a good game situational coach. But bottom line is teachers are there to get students to learn which is teaching and coaches are there to win which is coaching.
All of the other things are the passion for the position. Making them better men is part of it but if you don't win you won't be there long enough to make them better men.
When I talk to college athletes, which is daily, I find that the coaches they love the most are not always the friendliest but the ones that help them get where they want to be. They love that those are the guys who normally care for them as individuals as well as their athleticism but they appreciate that they made them better.
I guess the difference is, that teachers aren't bumping the unsuccessful students for ones that someone else took the time to develop into good students. If teachers could grab students from the portal and swap them out for those that were struggling, we might be talking.
For the record, I don't think coaches have to be friendly or even nice. What makes kids buy in is knowing that even if the coach is yelling at them, he cares about them. The disconnect is when athletes become nothing more than trading cards or numbers. That's when even the starters don't drink the koolaid.
What is the difference between taking a player out of the transfer portal or bringing in a freshman? When you go to play college sports or even high school sports you should know that if someone better comes along they will take your position. I do not see that as a problem with the coach because he is recruiting whether it is transfer portal or freshman the best players that can help his team which in my opinion is his job. I have said multiple times that the transfer portal will greatly change college baseball but it is here to stay so all of us will have to deal with it whether we like it or not. As much as I do not agree with it it is a new recruiting tool and is part of college sports. But I am a firm believer that a coach is supposed to play his best players who give him a chance to win
@PitchingFan posted:What is the difference between taking a player out of the transfer portal or bringing in a freshman? When you go to play college sports or even high school sports you should know that if someone better comes along they will take your position. I do not see that as a problem with the coach because he is recruiting whether it is transfer portal or freshman the best players that can help his team which in my opinion is his job. I have said multiple times that the transfer portal will greatly change college baseball but it is here to stay so all of us will have to deal with it whether we like it or not. As much as I do not agree with it it is a new recruiting tool and is part of college sports. But I am a firm believer that a coach is supposed to play his best players who give him a chance to win
The big difference is experience. The other issue is that now there aren't 18 freshman coming in, there are 18 freshmen and 12 transfers (or more). I've said that the system is most definitely allowing it and coaches are being rewarded who do it, it just doesn't make for a lot of "coaching" it makes for "managing".
Agree to some extent with bringing in new people, except that the rules have changed too fast in the past two years.
But, the comparison with teaching just doesn't work, for that, as well as many other reasons, because the definition of failing and the solutions to the problem of "failing" are completely different. A teacher whose students are failing can't just kick out all those students and bring in a bunch of new ones who can do the work, like a coach can. So the teacher has to figure out real solutions, whether that is changing the way he teaches or changing the material covered or assignments.
Oh yeah, maybe a coach could do that, too. But he doesn't have to, so why would he?
I think there's a big difference going to the portal vs. a HS freshman. Assuming they aren't in the portal because they suck at life, you know they can handle everything having to do with college and college baseball, there is Synergy video on them, and a coach can do their due diligence on them a lot easier. The conversations my son had with coaches when he went in the portal were very different than when he was in HS going through the recruiting process.
And from the player's standpoint they are probably a lot more comfortable in their own skin having been in college which can certainly help.
How many schools are bringing in 12 transfers? I went through the entire P5 earlier and I don't think any P5 schools actually brought in 12 portal transfers so that is unrealistic. My son's school lost all 8 starters in the field from last year's team and only brought in 3 or 4. I know it is not good for those who get beat out by a transfer guy who have been waiting their turn but that is life. I have said before that everyone should have a plan B but most don't and get mad when it bites them. I know my son could lose his spot this year but if he does he will have to decide what to do, plan B. Part of playing college baseball is that at any time someone can come in and beat you out for the spot you thought you had whether you are in the waiting or starting. Not fun but reality. I think there is a fine line between managing and coaching. A college HC is really a manager at heart or should be but better hire really good assistant coaches around him.
I didn’t look into this but I saw it on the TX A&M forum during the summer. They actually list 16 including JUCO transfers. Could be wrong but I doubt it’s far off.
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Plus PG lists A&M's HS commits as follows:
15 in class of '24 already
22 in class of '23
15 in class of '22
19 in class of '21
Right, that’s what I saw. I know 3 of the freshmen. With the returners, that means 30% cut after Christmas or redshirted.
Son's old teammate is a transfer there. Was the Friday starter.
Here is what A&M has done in the past 90 days.
Cut 13 players from the roster after the CWS was over.
Brought in 9 new players from the transfer portal
Brought in 7 JuCo transfers
Brought in 15 freshmen
Folks, this is typical of what’s going on right now. You could change A&M to OSU, UT, TCU, LSU, or almost any other big name program and it would still be true.
“Back up the bus”!
The JC transfers are veterans of the baseball competition. Their reflex action and knowledge of the game will advance the skill to play this game.
Quickness is the key, mental and physical.
question, where did they play in the 2021 & 2022 Summer League? Can they play multiple defense positions?
Bob
It used to be that big programs rarely recruited JUCO players.
This just goes to show how many JUCO programs have changed and should be a strong consideration for HS players that need to develop. Some of the best college coaches in our state are JUCO guys.
JMO
@TerribleBPthrower posted:EVERY Ivy has different standards for athletes and general applicants. I would bet my house there isn't a recruited 1600 SAT on an Ivy roster right now. I heard at least 3 Ivy coaches this summer tell kids they needed a 1250 SAT to get through admissions with coach support.
There are only a handful of schools that hold athletes to the same academic standard as general applicants; Caltech, MIT, JHU, UChicago, CMS, Pomona/Pitzer, and I believe WashU.
Washington & Lee