Little League Coach
 

Does anyone here coach Little League? I've either coached or help coach my son's basketball and t-ball teams in the past. This will be his second year in coach pitch. The league he is in has a shortage of coaches so I decided to step up and coach this year, despite of my 1 day on 2 days off schedule. Tball seemed pretty easy, just teaching the very minimum basics. Where to run after hitting the ball, catching and throwing .
This year, I want to be able to not only coach but teach these kids. Does anyone have any experience with the 6-8 yo age group? Any good sites to check out? All help is appreciated.

My dad has coached kids in his church before and says just to be patient. Just keep doing what you were before and I'm sure you will be fine. But then again if you are a firemen then I'm not so sure lol. My wife wants me to coach our sons team when he is old enough to play but I am scared I will be too hard on them because I was such a perfectionist with my sports when I played. Good luck!

No worries machme, my assistant coach is an leo! I think we are gonna name the team Guns N Hoses.

Coaching is like being a 2nd father figure. Point blank.

This.

Are you coaching in Garland?

It's pretty cool. I still have kids high five me from teams I've helped coach in the past. It's a great feeling knowing you made a positive impact on a kid.

No, I'm down in Waco.

Prefect lol talk to the guns and hoses foundation they might help y'all out

Ok I was just curious because a few leagues around here are looking for multiple coaches. I'm the assistant coach for my boys team so I am going over to the coaches house tomorrow night to go over the draft. If sounds funny as hell to say that about 7-8 year olds but we have a draft.

We did a lot of working on ground balls, catching and throwing. We spent the first few practices on that. Then we worked on batting, you wouldn't believe how many kids that age don't even know where to stand to bat.

My boy is 7, his birthday is later in the year so he misses the next age group. He's in 5-7 yo group and we had a draft too. Your plan is pretty much whatwe did, we had our first practice yesterday. Mostly it was for us to find out who has what abilities. We have a kid thats never played or even thrown a ball. His dad said he started to work with him about 3 days ago and hit the poor kid in the head twice!

I don't have any kids but I've "helped" coach my little cousins tball teams and 7-8yr old team last year. I loved it. I really enjoyed teaching them something that they'll use for a few more years. It's taught me patience and that you might have to tell certain kids the same thing over and over again lol

Obviously put the kid that can catch the best at first base, then set your infield. We were one kid away from having an outstanding infield. Outfielders are easy to find, sorry to say. 7-8 over here is machine pitch and it took awhile for the kids to get the timing down of the ball coming out of the machine.

Base running took some time, especially with the stuff they didn't see all the time. Like holding up when the ball is hit in the air. They just want to take off as soon as it's hit. That was fun trying to explain that to some of them why they had to stay on the bag lol

Something I learned too, don't be afraid to hurt their feelings, most of them won't get their feelings hurt. I tend to be hard on the boys that I knew were really good and had potential. So when they would start goofing off or not do what I knew they could do I would get on them pretty hard. Then later after practice I would go and explain to them why I did so. I'd tell them "I get on you more cause you're one of the better players on this team and I know you can do better than that". They would usually smile real big and run off

Damn, I actually miss the little shits

And no offense to parents on here, but some of these kids are real shitheads and apparently their parents don't get on to them at all. Cause I haven't pissed off a parent yet while coaching or "yelling" at their kid. Hell, most of the time when I've felt I shouldn't have been so loud or yelled I'd go and apologize to the parent and they would say "oh no, you say whatever you need to, he doesn't listen to me" WTF?? lol

Parents are scared to be a parent to their kid nowadays to avoid them "rebeling" or shying off. Which by doing exactly what they are doing, causes that to happen. That's the part that would be hard for me to coach is if a kid is being a little prick, and I get on to him, his parents turn it around on me, which would not end well for them.

Bert- I totally understand patience! I was trying to teach a kid the machanics of throwing, I'm sure I had to say Look at me a dozen times! I've also have had the kids that just are little brats too. We had a kid last year that just flat didn't want to be there. His mom made him play to get him out of his room.

We made it pretty clear to the parents that we want the kids to have fun but we would not tolerate constant acting up. We told the parents that the kids will be made to run if they continue to act up. That's a pretty standard discipline in sports. The parents seemed to be fine with it.

Having kids that don't want to be there is the worst. We had a couple in fall ball that could of given a shit less about baseball. At the beginning of the season we made sure they played equal amounts of time but by the end of the season we were like fuck it. Let the kids play that want to play, so they would sit out more than one inning in a row. The other part that kills me is when at the end of the season you tell a kid to go to right field and he doesn't know where it is and you have to take them out there. I get pissed because I have shown that kid in every practice and every game, but he doesn't care so I get to show him again. Parents if you kids don't want to play don't force them, it makes our jobs harder.