High School Coaches

Mostly old school tobacco spitters 10+ years ago, replaced by younger men who milk the fundraising aspect to their benefit and who couldn’t recognize dangerous throwing mechanics if it jumped up and slapped their Mamas in the face.

And about 10-15% of them are exceptional men and tremendous coaches

Not real impressed with what I saw during my kids last 4 years...... Coaches were nice people, but had difficulty managing games and were horrible with the pitching staff. Program is getting a reputation for ruining young arms by using the max pitch count as the decision point to make a pitching change......... The college kids that coached our summer travel team were awesome in comparison.

As with most things in life "you get what you pay for" Especially when you consider a HS baseball coach is generally a part time role and baseball is a non revenue generating sport. Based on this, I think the expectation (for public HS) is it would be nice to win but make sure nobody gets hurt due to the school's fault and don't have the coach or team publicly embarrass the school. Check off those two things and mission accomplished. There's much more pressure to win on private HS coaches which could lead to immature, vindictive, grandiose, abusive and narcissistic behavior.

All things considered, I'd say most are doing a reasonably good job.

Our conference was three divisions of eight teams each. We played our division twice each and eight more against random teams from other divisions. I knew a lot more about the eight teams in our division.

First, I don’t believe you would. get the same observations from various parents. I thought our coach was a good baseball guy lacking in communication skills. The lack of communication skills had some parents thinking he was a terrible coach. it was also uncool of him to place a spy in the stands to find out what parents were saying about him. But baseball wise he knew his stuff. I didn’t have issues with him. My son wasn’t sure the coach liked him until the next of soph season.

Being large classification high schools every team had baseball qualified coaches. Of the other seven schools five coaches were good, one was unhinged and from my perspective one was unethical.

The unhinged coach would get tossed from three or four games per season. Against us the team had to forfeit a game when the entire coaching staff was tossed. We were on the verge of a mercy anyway.

Any coach who intentionally has his pitchers throw at my kid is unethical. The catcher was a travel teammate of my son. He warned him be prepared to dance. The order was to drill him in the legs every time up so he doesn’t beat them with his bat and legs.

The first two years my son was something like 12-14 with four homers and a bunch of stolen bases off this team. They hit him in the first at bat in the thigh. The second at bat they knocked him out of the game. Got him square on the kneecap. He couldn’t walk to first.

Based on my experiences, I am not super comfortable with the verbiage - high school COACH.  I think high school MANAGER is much more accurate and fair to those out there that are truly coaching and instructing.  To be fair, most every HS baseball coach here are high school teachers first and run one of the HS sports teams second.  But they do willingly seek and take the job and the small amount of money that goes with it.

I think what sours me most is that my son had SIFNIFICANTLY better coaching and instruction at ages 7-9.  It had nothing to do with that age and everything to do with being lucky enough that real coaches were assigned to the teams he was on.  So when you see the real deal with your 3rd grader but something closer to a "fantasy baseball team manager" in high school, it's difficult to swallow.  What's worse, most of these HS baseball managers truly think they know the game and have things figured out that few parents could even understand.  I think that was largely the case years ago, but many of us have put our kids through travel ball, camps, clinics, lessons, etc since very young ages.  Many of us are highly educated on things we never used to be.  Whenever my son had lessons, the instructors encouraged me to stay, observe and then work with my son on specific things outside of the lesson.  I've always loved the game, but was an atrociously bad player and didn't really know about its finer points.  But when a former D1 college pitching coach is instructing your kid 1x1 at age 9 and you've got a front row seat to it, you learn a TON.  I am not a coach nor a big baseball mind, so I am not comfortable knowing way more about say, pitching mechanics, than my son's HS coach.  I want him to be borderline obsessive about ensuring he knows WAY more than some 46 year old dad who stopped playing baseball in the 8th grade.  My son is capable of absorbing so much more right now and thank God he'll have more of an opportunity to learn this fall when he goes to play for a guy whose coached at the college level for 19 years and spent the last 13 as a HC in the Jayhawk JUCO conference.  Famine to feast and very much drinking from a fire hose, but bring it on!

Velo's comment above regarding pitch counts gave me a chuckle.  My son has played for 3 different HCs at his HS.  I've long joked that the school's AD has bonus money incentives established for all his coaches to get complete games out of his pitchers.  The number of pitches thrown gets outrageous and the coaches seemingly always leave their starting pitchers in 10-15% longer than makes sense.  I know they're just trying to do what they feel is best to help the team win the game, but it causes problems.  Last summer's team had 2 2020s committed to a top 20 D1 JUCO program (15 min away) and their HC caught wind of the number of pitches those 2 players were throwing.  He called the HS coach and asked him to cease and desist.  He did, but the HS HC is right back at it this year. 

To end on a positive note, my son's HS coaches have all been very nice people.  They put in a lot of time for the job and I know their intentions are good.

Imo some of the parents I've seen rank lower than the worst coaches.

@2022NYC posted:

Imo some of the parents I've seen rank lower than the worst coaches.

Absolutely!  I agree 100%

I never had warm and fuzzy feelings about my son's coach.  However, he did not overwork his pitchers, he called a good game, and had assistant coaches who were also very good (that tells you something right there).  He would argue a call sometimes, but politely.  Never a yeller in games (well maybe once when a kid didn't get a bunt down in a playoff game).  Had very organized practices, program, summer camps, summer and fall practices, etc.  I know some parents (and players) didn't like him.  My son, now that he has graduated, has enormous respect for him, said he taught a high level of baseball.  I trust my son's opinion.

I find it funny that parents will experience one or sometimes 2 or 3 depending on turnover but yet go ahead and say / imply that ALL high school coaches aren't very good and are teachers who do it for a stipend or whatever.  There are absolutely some clowns who are coaches in the loosest sense of the word but your experiences are anecdotal and not the rule. 

I also find it funny how you bash the guy who is willing to step up and do the job on everything he does wrong yet you're never around to help out when it's tough to find qualified people as is.  Then you follow up with I don't know that much........but you know enough to know the coach is wrong?

Why don't we ever have a bash a travel coach thread?  It's always the HS coaches who get it on here.

My son's HS head coach was/is a history teacher and he is GREAT at that job. He and his brother coach at two high schools within 10 miles of each other. He is good with the kids and a great listener and always positive. When it came to strategy or that "moment" when a mound visit, infield meeting, or talk before an AB...I'm not so sure he was the best at those. We were loaded for two years on varsity in 2014 & 2015 and made semis in 14 and 15 and lost both times. The HC who beat us in son's senior year, coaches a great program in east cobb and I was told by other coaches who are friends of mine years later that he had said, " I have no idea how (insert HC name here) did not win back to back 6A titles those 2 years with all that talent?" Anyway....our 3rd base coach was and is a solid baseball guy and pretty much ran the team while he was there. We never had any issues and pulled more than our fair share as parents to support the program, as do the minority of parents in a typical HS program.

My son's HS head baseball coach is a good man and an exemplary coach.  But he really, really, really hates to lose.

Feature or bug? I'm still not sure.

Honestly, not my job to have thoughts about the coaches. The coach is the coach. It was my son's job to figure out how to get along with whoever it was and learn all that he could.

Son played for five high school coaches total.  Two at his high school, one in travel and two in showcase.  The first showcase guy was awesome.  Good communicator, great with the kids, knew the game.  I tried to get him hired here when our job came open but he didn't want to move.  2nd showcase coach was solid.  Younger guy who was still learning a bit but he got a head coaching job shortly after at a bad school and has done well.  The travel coach was terrible.  Showed up late, played favorites to kids who were going to be in his system (didn't affect my kid but it did affect the team).  By far the worst travel decision we ever made.  High school coach #1 was very organized at practice, very unorganized in communication and everything else.  Ended up being bi-polar and quit or was fired depending on who you ask.  #2 high school coach was a young coach in his first head coaching job.  He was not qualified but had an ego the size of Texas.  Unorganized in every facet of the program and an overall bad coach and evaluator.  We still can't figure out how he was hired.  My son's high school and Jr high football coaches were nothing short of incredible. 

The best baseball coach my kid has played for is his current JUCO coach and it's not even close.