The Little League Coach

What it is

Kelly Nichols contacted me today about a great program endorsed by one of my all time favorites! Tino Marinez and sponsored by Briggs and Stratton. The premise of the Briggs and Stratton Diamonds in the Rough Contest is to make sure every kid has a top notch facility to play ball on. This is obviously a very worthy cause that I am happy to support!

Their site describes the contest like this:

“Kids face challenges everywhere. At school, at home, from friends and even teammates. To overcome
these challenges, they need the tools and support to build confidence and make good decisions. Playing
baseball helps kids build the determination and leadership needed to get things done and allows them to
realize what they’re made of. We call this The Power Within.”

How it Works

It is very simple. They are requesting that kids ages 7-14 answer the following simple questions:

• How has playing baseball given you The Power Within to overcome a challenge on or off the field?
• What was the challenge?
• How would you use the money to help your baseball team?

The questions can be answered in the following ways:

• Up to a 300-word written response
• Video no longer than two minutes
• Photo collage no larger than 11” by 17”

Why Wouldn’t You Submit?

I have to wonder why anyone wouldn’t submit to this contest. It is so easy! Only 300 words or a two minute video?

When it is Due

The entry phase is only open until March 23rd, so hurry!

I support just about anything that is good for the kids. Most leagues struggle to buy equipment, much less maintain facilities. This is a great opportunity to make capital improvements to their facilities. Please make sure to enter the contest and good luck! I will post the winners when Kelly gets them to me.

Do you have any great sports related charity events to share? Post a comment below and let us know about it.

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Pitching is King
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Opening Day a Huge Success
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When my friend and I began the minor’s season we knew that one thing ruled above all others. PITCHING! It makes or breaks a team. With the new Little League pitch count rules, each team needs at least 3 pitchers a game in minors. In the long run, this is not a bad thing. We are developing many more pitchers that we ever have in the past. But, in the heat of a game it can sometimes be tough to find someone that can throw strike. Much less anyone that can hit locations and have a little speed.

Knowing this up front, we chose to select pitchers above all else. Nobody can get two or three studs on a team, but with one stud and four or five consistent strike throwers, you can go a long way! This is where the draft strategy came into play. We don’t hit the best, we don’t field the best, but we definitely have one of the best pitching staffs in the league. And what do we all know? Good pitching stops good hitting EVERY TIME!

At the end of the season, we will be playing a double elimination tournament to prepare our minor leaguers for the 9-10 year old All-Star tournament. This tournament will take place over the course of a week. Every team will need to go 6 or 7 deep in pitching. Hopefully we score enough runs to support our pitching. Then we will look like draft masters!

Do you have any pitching management tips to share? Post a comment below and let us know about it.

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Opening Day Tomorrow
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Dedicated to Sportsmanship

Yes, this site is dedicated to teaching good sportsmanship and leadership skills, but we all know we need structure in our lives! I think I may have a little too much structure, but serving on our Board of Directors is how I provide the structure that the kids need to play ball.

You would think you just show up for a game and bring your glove right? Wrong! Being on the Board is a full time job! That full time job involves a lot of time that I have to invest and take away from the things I love.

Day in the Life

Here was my day:
(Pretty Typical)

1. Work all day long on my day job
2. Haul butt home from work
3. Wolf down a pork chop and mac & cheese
4. Out the door to combined pitching practices
5. Straight from practice to a board meeting
6. After the board meeting spend 2 hours figuring out that the new software we bought to control the entry locks to the snack bar won’t work w/o a new USB adapter cable
7. Home around 11PM
8. School work for about 2 hours
9. Answer hundreds of emails
10. Write this post!

Season Starting

With the season starting, things should slow down a bit, but not much I am sure! Anyway, that is the true life of a Little League Coach and parent.

Anyone have a similar story to share? Click below to comment.

Opening Day a Huge Success
I Love Vista Print
Opening Day Tomorrow
Rough Night
Help Feed the Needy for Easter

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Opening day was a huge success for us! This is a great day in the Little League. Our league goes overboard offering 4 bouncy jumpy things and carnival games. We also have a full grill, a Chevy Tahoe raffle, and lots and lots of icees! The kids have an absolute blast, but boy is it tough on the volunteers!

The Schedule

8:30AM we start w/ pictures
11:00AM the bouncy things show up
Noon: Volunteers arrive to build everything
3:00 The festivities begin
5:00 Line up for ceremonies
6-8 Carnival style atmosphere

I think our opening day rivals many of the county and city events that they host. I guess the only thing missing is face painting! Maybe we can add that next year!

Lesson Learned

We didn’t cook enough during the ceremonies to meet the slam demand we get when they are over.

Do you have a great opening day tip to share? Post a comment below and let us know about it.

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I have used Vista Print for many years. They are a great service that provides online internet printing and design. Their system is intuitive and easy to use. It is amazing how fast you can create post cards, custom post-it notes, elaborate stationary, magnets, calendars, car door magnets, and much more. There is not much you need that you can’t find there!

Have a custom design? They will take care of it, they really do it all and at a price cheaper than anyone else I have found.

Do you have a great free service to tell us about? Post a comment below and let us know about it.

Check them out now!

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Tomorrow is opening day and here I sit at 4AM!!!!! We have pictures for my minor baseball team at noon, softball at 2:30 and the festivities start at 3PM. I have to be there to help set up from noon until 3PM and then I have to run the grill section!!! I am the emcee for the ceremonies which start at 5PM and then back to the grill!

We have a frisbee dog show, Disc*Connected K9’s, scheduled to go on immediately after the ceremonies, should be very fun for the kids.

That said! I am going to sleep!

Do you have a great opening day story to share? Post a comment below and let me know about it.

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Tonight was a rough night, but every team must endure this at some point I guess. At least we aren’t the Patriots! They have to live w/ it all year, we just have to live with it until our game next week.

The Set Up

Our league is very small. We have only two teams in each of the key divisions. Because of this, we are required to interleague with other leagues and we are left to our own devices to determine a champion within our own league at each division. Our league has chosen to select its champion using a head-to-head mechanism. The important part of winning the league championship is that the district plays a “tournament of champions” at the end of the year and crowns a district champion from the regular season teams. This is every teams goal at the beginning of the season.

Last Game

Our teams play each other five times during the course of the year. Two to start the season, three to end it. Winning the first two games would be huge! We took care of business the first game winning 7-3 pretty handily. Our pitching was suspect going into the season, but one of our players has decided she is a star now and is playing as such. She pitched a 3 hitter and we won the game.

Tonight

As often is the case, tonight was a different story. We started out a little rough w/ a couple of throwing errors and a few walks and boom, down 4-0 in the first. I wasn’t all that concerned, because we can typically score. Our offense is great, but they have a pretty good young pitcher, but we should still hit her. We did fight back and went up in the 5th 6-5. They came back and were up 7-6 going into the last inning. We didn’t score, oh well.

One of Those Nights

It was one of those nights where nothing I did went right. Every call I made backfired. Rather than try and steal 3rd, I chose to bunt the runner home from second. You can do this w/ a good bunt and steal. I call it a “bunt and run”. The runner takes off from 2nd and the batter bunts, by the time they throw down to first, the runner is headed home and scores. Unfortunately, two girls in a row were unable to get a bunt down. (they both happen to be my daughters which makes it worse) Oh well, such is life in Little League.

On to the Future

For the next 14 games or so we play the other league’s teams. There is no real reward for beating them and they are a great place to train your players and get pitchers some work. By the time we get back to playing our league rival, we should be in tip top shape. The last three games of the year should be fun!

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Since 1940, Union Gospel Mission has been bringing hope to the hungry, hurting and homeless in the Metro Vancouver area. Now, in 2008, UGM is unveiling the newest tool in its continued efforts to bring light to the dark corners of the Lower Mainland: the all-new UGM.ca.

Through this completely renovated website, UGM is harnessing current technology to bring engaging stories, fresh updates and helpful tools to both daily guests and potential donors. A clean new design sets the stage for up-to-date information on all of UGM’s facilities and services, available volunteer positions, and current career opportunities.

Perhaps the most exciting component of the new website is the launch of UGM’s official blog, The Street. Stories for The Street are written weekly by UGM’s front-line outreach workers, serving as disarming evidence of the challenges and changes that are seen every day in the neighbourhoods of the Lower Mainland.

Help Feed The Hungry This Easter Easter is just around the corner and the UGM needs your help to provide hot Easter meals and other life-changing services to hungry, hurting and homeless men, women and children in Vancouver. A complete meal cost only $2.59. This is an amount I believe we can all afford.

All readers making donations will be recognized in a blog post next Monday. If you have a website or blog, I will link to it. The meals and other services we provide can be the start of a new life and new beginning for those in need. Simply make a donation at UGM’s online donation page, then email me a copy of the email receipt. Feel free to leave a comment about your donation as well.

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Reference: Article first posted at www.johnchow.com, reprinted here to help raise donation levels.

2 Comments »

Both my softball and my baseball team hold pitching practice once a week. The improvement we see over the course of a three month season is phenomenal. Pitching is the most important part of the game and should never be ignored.

Stretch vs. Windup

This is a debate that I have going with a number of coaches in a variety of leagues. My opinion? Teaching the stretch position is lazy coaching. OK, there are exceptions to this rule, but very few. A few reasons why you would want to start from the stretch:

1. The kid is all over the place and hasn’t developed the motor skills to control the additional motions.
2. The kid has difficulty getting his arm “back” in the proper throwing position.
3. The kid’s head won’t stop bobbing and needs to be kept still.

Other than that, I can’t think of any other reason at a young age to pitch from the stretch. The fact is, in the first few weeks, a kid will definitely struggle from the wind up. In the long run though, throwing from the windup give them more power and helps them to keep their momentum going towards the plate. They have their whole life from age 12 up to learn the stretch position, now teach them to pitch properly from the windup and they will be better in the future for it.

Pitching from the windup is a natural progression if you have taught them to throw properly during regular practices. The two step throw lends itself to the windup position. Proper techniques are what baseball is all about. Teach, repeat, demonstrate, repeat, teach, repeat, demonstrate, repeat. My teams can finish my sentences because I stay on message at ALL times. This is essential to the sport and requires that I have a plan and technique that I am teaching.

The good of it all

All in all, the real key is proper technique and repetitive practice. So many times I see teams standing one the field in a line taking grounders. One fields while 11 watch. This is a horrible injustice to the kids. Most of our teams are at least competitive by the end of the season because we drill them to death. We make all drills games and then they are having fun and don’t even know they are practicing! Do it on the fly, make up a reason to get points for accomplishing something, they love it! Want them to run faster? Take out a stop-watch and make up times, they don’t know or care, they are just trying harder because it is a game, a competition. And isn’t that what we really want? Our kids learning to compete at the highest level they are individually capable of?

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I don’t want to get too cocky, but our softball team, the Flames are very strong. Not only are they a very talented team, they are one of the funnest teams I have ever coached. They really are coming together and being around them is a joy.

Our first game was last night and I was pleasantly surprised. While I knew we had a good defense and very powerful hitting, our pitching was very suspect! Enter our new (for now anyway) star and team leader.

I have coached this girl for four years now. She is very talented but never really lived up to her talent. She didn’t like pitching, even though she had great potential, she didn’t like being hot, even though we live in Florida! She had little or no confidence and doubted herself.

I don’t know what happened this year, but she has come out of her shell completely! She is leading the team’s cheers and showing a level of confidence she never showed before. Confidence is a very shaky thing though and we will need to help her work through the difficult times she will inevitably face over the long season we have here in the south.

Tonight we held a light practice. FCAT testing is taking place in our county and this is serious business. During that practice this girl continued to lead the team. As we were leaving she asked me who was pitching. I told her I was planning on her. Her reply? “yeessssssssss”. A far cry from the one who didn’t care either way for 3 years.

Hopefully she will maintain this attitude as we march towards our top team championship!

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