Question for the Coaches - Changing a Culture of Losing

This is a tough job to accomplish and it won't happen in one season. From what you describe the biggest thing missing is discipline. If you don't have discipline it doesn't matter how good you are at everything else.

First and foremost I lay out expectations and rules. Now overall I'm not a big rule guy because I think players should know how to act. In this case I'm going to have a bunch of rules. They will get them in typed form, we will spend a day going over them and I will meet with parents to discuss them. Then I will enforce them.

Second I'm going to make practice grueling because I want to run off the ones who don't want to be out there. They will either get on board with what we're doing or they will get gone.

Third I'm going to try and focus on the younger kids - mainly freshmen and sophomores. Seniors will be stuck in their ways and probably won't change. As long as they have a great attitude they can stay and get what they can. Juniors have a chance to change some but it won't be much. Overall I'm going to treat them like seniors. If they have a good attitude then they can stay. Basically what that means is I'm not going to make wholesale changes in their swing, fielding or throwing slot. I'm going to have them go through the drills to do them right but if they don't make the changes I'm putting in (assuming they are wrong to begin with) I'm not going to worry about it. The younger kids will get the bulk of coaching.

Fourth I'm going to start recruiting the hallways of my school for the younger athletes to get them out. I don't care how good of a coach you are - you can't create athleticism. You can bring it out and / or maximize it but you can't create it.

Fifth you need to find like minded coaches. Ones who will treat the game and practice serious like it should be. Then I'm going to turn them loose in practice to teach and teach and teach and teach.

Sixth I'm going to organize practice so we can get a lot of teaching involved. Focused drills on specific skills, rule of the day / week and create a repeatable practice schedule so the guys can get into a routine each day. They are learning so much in a short period of time so they will need the comfort that comes with familiarity. Once that is good to go then you slowly add other things into the mix. Now you're teaching them to be flexible and handle adverse situations. Do things so that they can create success in practice and get the feeling of success.

Seventh I'm going to ease up the schedule to try and find teams we could compete with. Obviously certain games have to be played due to conference or whatever. We will set the goal of finishing higher than what we did the previous year. Nothing specific but just higher - could be higher place in standings or win totals. I'm a fan of tough schedules but with a team just learning the game they need to play against teams they won't just get crushed in. They need to have games that create aticipation and feeling of competition.

Ninth I'm not going to just start ripping kids. Physical mistakes we work on and mental mistakes we will discuss. Immaturity will draw my ire though and get on my bad side. I want to get the idea of hard work in place to create ownership in how they do. Hard practices that make them work and show improvement to create pride. They need to realize how great it is to be on the baseball team. They need to develop a sense of pride and commitment.

Tenth is to do some community work to get them out in public. Do some good things so people will want to support them and come to the games. We can do this through some fundraising to generate money for extra things - equipment not unnecessary clothing stuff - make them work to take ownership. Have camps with younger kids so these younger kids can start looking up to the players and want to be them. Plus the guys can teach the things we would be doing helps them understand it better.

The first two years I would never stress wins and losses. I would stress improvement and competition. Gradually I would increase the difficulty of the schedule to keep challenging them. It will probably take 4 years to do this turnaround. While you can influence the sophomores the freshman class will be huge because that is the first group to come through my system.

Have to remember they didn't get that bad in one season and it won't turnaround in one season.

One other thing - you will need to coach the parents up as well. I'm not saying the parents are losers or don't know how to win but they havn't been holding the kids accountable. They are helping the bad culture to continue to grow by not forcing change at home. Once the coach start holding them accountable it will get ugly. Kid misses practice and he gets held out of games or having to run extra they will come complaining and raising heck.

One other thing is get the principal on your side. When parents come complainging make the principal want to be on your side when the parents start raising heck.

Thanks for putting so much thought into this, coach! It's like you were there.

I feel sorry for the current coach - probably a science teacher or something. But if my son was at that school, I'd love to have a new coach come and and do what you suggest.

I think I would like the challenge of building a team like this and see how far my staff and I could take them. I used to think that the right coach could turn around any team but after being in the real world I'm not sure if that's a true statement anymore. I think that there are some places that for whatever reason(s) they just don't get it.