Good Team v Good Coaching

A good coach for one player can be a bad coach for another.....Your son should pick a coach that shows geniune interest in him as a player. A good player can learn/advance from just about any good or bad coach.

Most college teams have a posting of alumni that have played professionally and you can check how many guys routinely play pro ball after playing for that school under that particular coach.

Good coaches make a difference. Sometimes a big difference. I've seen it several times.

Bad coaches make a difference too. Also sometimes a big difference.

Luckily I think my sons have benefited from some VERY good coaches.

History repeats itself...

My son played on a 14u team which won a championship with a horrible coach. Once he even failed to show up for a game. I went to many practices and the only thing I saw the coach do was put balls in a pitching machine.

I'm certainly not saying there's no correlation between good coaching and good playing. My point is sometimes good players rise above bad coaching.

You will find a good team with a bad coach, and a good coach with a bad team. The point is that good coaches teach players to be better.

We spoke to Jason Armstrong - D1 hitting coach at UC Davis a few weeks back on hsbbweb radio. Jason, by his own admission, was lightly recruited by the D1's out of college. He attended the Stanford All-Star camp and a D3 Coach from Texas was there (Trinity in San Antonio) took a liking to him and recruited him heavily thereafter. They had a vested interest in Jason and developed him into a D3 All-American and draftee of the Toronto Blue Jays. We specifically asked Jason what it meant to have a coach believe in you and the importance of it. If you get a chance, Jason's interview can be heard in the Archived Links thread in the hsbbweb radio forum.

In terms of outcomes or results, I think coaching is underrated in importance in HS, travel baseball and College. I think it is overrated in importance in the Pros in terms of overall results. In my experience, twotex's championship results are more the execption than the rule. It is very difficult to overcome bad coaching at the 14U level. BTW....Twotex congrats!

My two cents...I would look for different things from different coaches at each level. For travel coaches up to and including 16U I would look for skills development, and do they make the game/team enjoyable. 16-18U showcase teams is about connections to college programs, coaching your son on how to find a good college program and some skills development specific to their position. A high school coach doesn't necessarily have to be good but someone that encourages him to get better on his own (weight room, training, nutition, possible private lessons) and opens the players eyes to what may be possoible at the next level. College has position coaches and head coaches. Your son will be spending alot of time with the position coach so it needs to be somebody he is comfortable with, and someone he can continue to learn from. The college head coach has be able to manage a game, manage his position coaches, recruit and keep the money coming in from alumni and the administration.....and did I mention win!

Can't comment on beyond college coaching. But it appears that at the MLB level the position coaches are real important and the head coach is more about managing the position coaches, egos in the dugout and the media.

I would not want to walk a mile in either my middle son's (high school) or oldest son's (college) coaches shoes. They have a tough job. As I've gotten older (I don't know about wiser), I'm giving my son's coaches a little more slack in trying to understand how and why they do the things they do.

Fenway, it was an amazing season to watch. Needless to say there were some excellent players. The team disbanded after that season.

You hit the nail on the head about different coaches at different levels. I wish I had been more aware of these needs earlier on.