Reply to Fairness (or lack of) in Rec Baseball Playing Time

Forum Index » Sports General Discussion

Reply to "Fairness (or lack of) in Rec Baseball Playing Time"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Sounds like you have a bad coach. I've coached rec baseball & soccer and my kids are currently in soccer and travel baseball. I try to focus on four things when allocating playing time:

1. Kids want to play.
2. Kids want to win. 
3. Kids want challenges and need them to develop. (This is #3 rather than #2 because given the choice, they would rather watch a teammate make the winning catch than be the one missing that catch that loses the game.) 
4. Kids need incentives to stay focused.

So my basic principle is equal play time. If possible, nobody should sit more than one inning in a row, and everyone gets to bat.

But it's not usually possible to be completely equal, and there are different positions that get more or less action. I favor the better players in key positions (which positions are key depends on the age), but to encourage development, the less talented players also get regular infield play and opportunities at key positions.

All of the above gets adjusted to account for attitude, effort, showing up to practice, and sportsmanship.  Kids who goof off at practice will be first in line to sit a second inning on the bench, no matter how talented. Kids who really put in effort and try to get better are rewarded with more opportunities.

As for my kid versus the rest - I try to emulate the best coach I've seen on any of my kids teams - we didn't even know which kid was his until 2/3 of the season was over.  I'm not there but I'm working toward it. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics