Lots of butt hurt former coaches in here. |
This was an excellent description of the baseball years as we’ve experienced them. My son’s a 90 pound 5’2 8th grader. His Dad is 6’2, so his growth is coming. He has repeatedly been cut by multiple travel teams and is struggling at the bat. We’re encouraging him to keep playing rec and practicing, but I’m not sure the drive is there anymore. It’s sad to see as he loves baseball, had decent success in the “daddy ball years” (even without his Dad as the coach), but rec ends this year and he may not make the JV HS team. It’s also frustrating to him that some early bloomers have switched to baseball and catch the coaches eye because they’re big and if they make contact, hit the ball far. But they don’t know the game. Meanwhile, some of the biggest beneficiaries of “daddy ball” have quit because they’re tired of Dad or Dad’s not able to control things anymore. We try to stay positive about baseball while encouraging playing other sports that better fit his size. He’s a good tennis player and could make varsity as a freshman, but it doesn’t have the allure of baseball. |
I’d encourage him to hang in if he really likes baseball- at the end of 8th grade last year my son was 5’4” 95. Less than a year later he is 5’9” 120- with almost all of that growth happening since school started. No signs of slowing down yet either. Husband is 6’1” so likely has at least a few more inches coming. He has caught up height wise to most of the other kids in a pretty short amount of time. He did make the competitive JV team at our school- was not a starter but saw a good amount of playing time especially as the season progressed. Struggled quite a bit with BBCOR in middle school but hit quite well this Spring- lots of line drive singles -and it was nice to see. I think it is likely he makes the JV team again next Spring and he has every chance to earn a starting role if he keeps working hard in the weight room and on the field. Hopefully more power comes. We moved him down to an absolutely terrible travel team in 8th grade- the only one that would take a kid his size. But he got reps and had fun. He also has been consistent with batting lessons and I think that has made a big difference. But yeah- baseball is particularly rough on late bloomers. |
Wishful thinking. |
D1 Commit parent here too, and this is amazingly well said. It is hard to see this if your son is only 10 or so, but this is absolutely spot on. |
Why would you think European kids don’t play soccer games and keep score? Here is a link to Barcelona youth academy 9 and 10 year olds playing a match against another club. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-3B9IQDfD7A&pp=ygUJQmFyY2EgdTEw And youth academy soccer is subsided by professional clubs. |
I will admit, I remembered the article differently for kids 12 and under. NY Times Article on Ajax Soccer Club in the Netherlands: "Americans place a higher value on competition than on practice, so the balance between games and practice in the U.S. is skewed when compared with the rest of the world. It’s not unusual for a teenager in the U.S. to play 100 or more games in a season, for two or three different teams, leaving little time for training and little energy for it in the infrequent moments it occurs. A result is that the development of our best players is stunted." “As soon as a kid here starts playing (in the US), he’s got referees on the field and parents watching in lawn chairs,” John Hackworth, the former coach of the U.S. under-17 national team and now the youth-development coordinator for the Philadelphia franchise in Major League Soccer, told me. “As he gets older, the game count just keeps increasing. It’s counterproductive to learning and the No. 1 worst thing we do.” During training sessions at Ajax, I rarely heard the boys’ loud voices or laughter or much of anything besides the thump of the ball and the instruction of coaches. It could seem grim, more like the grinding atmosphere of training for an individual sport — tennis, golf, gymnastics — than what you would expect in a typically boisterous team setting. But one element of the academy’s success is that the boys are not overplayed, so the hours at De Toekomst are all business. Through age 12, they train only three times a week and play one game on the weekend. “For the young ones, we think that’s enough,” Riekerink said when we talked in his office one day. “They have a private life, a family life. We don’t want to take that from them. When they are not with us, they play on the streets. They play with their friends. Sometimes that’s more important. They have the ball at their feet without anyone telling them what to do.” |
It’s baseball. Guess what? You have to work with a kid for them to get better. Yes. You. Yes - that means you can’t go play golf on Saturday morning. You need to be at the field at 8 am. Let’s say you have an 8-10 year old. Get up, dress, grab breakfast. Has to be a decent breakfast because your kid is going to be working. Get to the field. Don’t forget your tee and buckets of balls. Warm up. Stretch and jog then run. Then slow throw 10-15 minutes. Then grab the tee and work on stance and swing form. Figure 40-60 swings tops. As you get tired the form will deteriorate. So it is not 40-60 swings in 10 minutes. Correct swing errors. Take a break and then grab gloves. For an 8-10 year old - throw (rather than hit) ground balls. Watch their footwork and form. It’s all about speed to get there first so fielding the ground ball is easier. Work on movement direction so they can start body momentum towards the base they are throwing too. That’s not necessarily an 8 year old thing other than emphasizing speed to get to fielding position fast. Figure 20-25 grounders to each side. At this point the arm is decently warmed up. Long toss would be good now. Work up to it, and judge your distances of course. For an 8-10 year old - 1st to 3rd would likely be a good start. Watch form. You can throw pop ups to practice catching. Take a break - then finish with batting. Work on stance and swing form. Maybe 30-50 swings depending on how well he/she keeps form. Do that 2/3 times a week. Note: nothing about pitching or catching. Those are other skill sets. You need to work on those separately. Figure 2.5-3.0 hours for a full session. But, you can divide things up, and you can do most things at home. Buy a net batting cage and you can do everything but pitched batting practice. Your little league coach isn’t going to be doing that with your kid. You are. Do it. “What? That means I have to do stuff with my kid. I’m not doing that.” Okay. Don’t do, but understand that some parents are doing that. And, you want your kid to learn by osmosis to do what others are spending actual time on learning. Guess what? That’s not going to happen. Your choice. Incidentally that goes for every other thing your kid does. Want to play an instrument? Play chess? Dance? Run cross country? Sing? Act? Paint? There are no short cuts. What? Your kid isn’t going to get better by attending 4-5 pre-season practices with 12-14 other kids? How could that be? Must be a bad coach. Oh well - you can pick him up late. The coach won’t mind babysitting. |
Questions foe bolded: 1) WTF not? Seriously, “coach”, what on earth are YOU doing if not this very specific practice that you have laid out? 2) Actually my kids’ coaches/teachers in all other activities DO teach them how to do said activities. For example: My kid wanted to play piano so I signed him up for lessons. Why bother instead of just teaching him myself? Because I don’t know how to play piano! I also don’t know how to teach my daughter gymnastics, but somehow she is magically learning at her weekly practices. I assumed her coaches were teaching her but I guess it must be through osmosis? You are a coach in name only, and an incredibly lazy and entitled one at that. It’s also weird how apparently you don’t practice during the season. Is that because you’re too busy running three hour private practices with just your own kid? If the kids on your team are just bad at the end of the season as they are at the start, it’s not because their parents suck. It’s because you suck. |
And how much do you pay for piano lessons? My kid’s studio charges $100 per hour for youth lessons. Gymnastics training? My daughter did TOPS and trained through age 13. Fifteen years ago that was $120 a week.
Hmmmm - I wonder what the difference could be? |
My DS is a recruited college athlete. Started playing his sport at 5 years old. YEARS of dealing with and hearing parents go on and on about their kid's playing abilities. YEARS of watching the cliques and how those parents tried to maneuver their kid's path. My DH and I just stayed off to the side. Our role was paying team fees, contributing to a coaches gift and washing their uniforms. Let our DS enjoy their sport.
The best thing happened as the later years occurred. All of the "noise", especially from those parents, became less and less as they realized that their child was skilled but not going all that far after all. The quiet that developed at that point was welcomed and lovely. |
The piano lesson example is the equivalent of paying for private coaching. I doubt anyone’s kid would be able to play the piano if you sent them to group instruction for just $150 total for 10 weeks, they were one of 12 kids, they only actually were able to use the piano for say 5-6 minutes each week (because there is only one) because there are 12 kids and the piano teacher was just a volunteer that may or may not really know how to play the piano themselves. Also, think of how much time pianists (or any instrument players) practice on their own to get better…you pay a piano teacher a lot of money for each lesson for the teacher to also expect your kid to practice one to two hours each day on their own. Yeah…your baseball player kid will be much better if you apply the above to baseball. |
Baseball is an incredibly difficult sport. Unless you are a freakish athlete you need to do a ton of training on your own away from the team. Like about a 3-1 or 4-1 ratio individual to team training. Deion Sanders who was a generational freaky athlete said football was “easy” compared to baseball. The team training is mainly to practice skills that you can’t do on your own e.g, bunt defense, relays, double plays etc. |
Let’s see… my kid also learned to play trombone in the school band. Zero private lessons, just group instruction where all the kids are playing different instruments! It’s incredible how much a passionate, motivated teacher can accomplish. |
Listen, no one is saying kids shouldn’t practice on their own or with their parents on their own time. Obviously they should. But there is one “coach” on this thread who thinks it’s ridiculous that parents expect their kid to learn ANY skills during their Little League practice sessions. Which is obviously a stupid position.
If he doesn’t want to coach any kids but his own, he should simply bow out. Lots of Dads are eager to volunteer, and he is not doing these kids any favors by refusing to even TRY to help them get better at baseball. If he wants to get paid for his incredible coaching program, he shouldn’t VOLUNTEER to coach and then not do it. |