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Tryouts Tonight!
We had our first round of tryouts tonight and everything went great! One thing I noticed was how well schooled the kids were. We have been blessed with very good coaching across the board and it shows in the mid-range age 8-11 year old players. There were no kids, other than the brand new ones, that weren’t fairly fundamentally sound.
The other part of the equation was that they actually performed those fundamentals properly! This just goes to show that they are learning them and capable of performing them when “in the spotlight”. It is important to make sure they understand they are in the spotlight every time they field a ball be it practice, a game, or in the back yard. Fundamentally sound players will excel more often than not.
Travel practice tomorrow, then final round of tryouts on Thursday!
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The Eternal Little League Debate
I have served on boards of Little League baseball for almost 20 years. Every year, every league, in every country, every city, every borough, and every town has the same debate about this time of year.
How many Major’s teams should we have?
Do not feel alone or abandoned, frustrated or flustered, and above all, don’t give up. The one thing I know for sure is, in the end, it all works out! That said, the debate is always a healthy one and sometimes feelings get hurt. That is the sad part of the equation, nobody joins a Little League Board of Directors w/ the goal of making enemies or hurting feelings. Everyone joins w/ the intent of helping the kids.
In fact, it is my experience that those who battle the most are the ones who have the most in common and some of the best ideas. The spirit of the battle should be about the kids, that’s all, nothing more, nothing less. Coaches, managers, parents, board members, all their opinions are irrelevant. It is the board’s duty to do what is best for all of the kids in the league, period. Anything short of that is unacceptable.
That said, everyone thinks what they are doing IS for the best of the kids. Therein lies the problem and root of all passion on the subject. So how do we resolve this?
Little Leagues provides us with two very clear guidelines to help us determine the number of Major League teams to have in our league:
1. Any child that rates a total of 15 in 5 skills, or an average of 3 for each skill, should play in the major leagues.
2. A league should have 1 major team per each 2 minor teams.
A couple of things to consider here. First, intent, second, reality.
The INTENT of these guidelines is to get EVERY kid who is capable of playing baseball to play in the major leagues. Not the best, not the studs, not only home run hitters, but EVERY child aged 11 and 12 UNLESS they are extremely weak or maybe a first year player w/ little coordination.
Last year Little League made it mandatory that all 12 Year Olds play in the Majors because so many leagues were pushing them down to minors. The bottom line is, any 12 year old kid that is 1/2 coordinated can play in the major’s division. Additionally, Little League has STOPPED calling it the major league division, and now refers to it as the Little League division, this is because too many people were making it too competitive.
Those that have been readers of this blog know I am ALL for competition. I love it and the life lessons it teaches are irreplaceable. So why do we want to deprive average kids from getting these life lessons simply to have a superstar major’s program? Again, Little League wants AVERAGE kids to play Little League baseball. It is sort of their birthright as Americans, who are we to deprive those kids of this opportunity?
Want more proof? Little League does not allow any board of directors to have more than 50% of the members be coaches or managers. Why? Coaches NEVER think there is enough talent. They just got done with all-stars and they are comparing the new crop of raw talent to that they have nurtured for years to the level they have become.
Some parents, of course, think their kid is better than he or she is and want them to move up too fast. This is another issue a board must address. Finally, some parents refuse to allow their kids to play up, unfortunately, nothing a board can do about this. If a kid is drafted into the major leagues, that’s where he plays, if the parent doesn’t want him to play there, he can’t play. How can a board send a kid that is drafted into majors down to minors? What grounds do they have? What if he hurts someone? That is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
So what are we to do as board members? The solution is NEVER a simple one, but the league should ALWAYS err on the side of moving kids up, rather than forcing them down. Each team needs a few bubble kids to develop. It is amazing how much progress they make over the year in majors vs. how little they would make in minors.
One year I held my oldest boy down. He was the star of the team, he didn’t push himself and he didn’t improve nearly as much as if he had moved up. That was a mistake. The next year, he wasn’t the stud any more and he improved 100%.
When in doubt, move kids up, but do not do it to the detriment of the league. There is absolutely no reason to have a kid up that does not have the skills to perform as an “average” player. NOT an “average existing major league player”, but an “average player for his/her age”. Kids should be judged among their peers and the top % should move to the major leagues. It really is that simple, if only deciding how to accomplish that were so simple.
How does your league determine how many major league teams to have?
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Top 10 Reasons I Love Little League
10. Board Meetings.
9. Smile on a kid’s face when he gets a hit.
8. Smile on a mom’s face when her kid gets a hit.
7. Smile on the coach’s face when a kid gets a hit.
6. Smiles in the stands of parents of the losing kids.
5. Smiles on the face of parents of the winning kids.
4. The fact that most kids don’t know or care who won the game.
3. Seeing kids from competing teams playing together 5 minutes after the game is over w/o a care in the world.
2. Seeing opposing managers at the local hangout after a game w/o a care in the world.
1. Board Meetings.
Why do you love Little League?
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Plane Crash into Hudson River, What Can We Learn?
It may seem odd to take this miracle and apply it to youth sports, but there is a lot of things to be learned from the crash of US Airways flight. How about that captain? Scully, they call him of all things. Amazing! But what can we apply to our teams from this event?
1. When the pressure is on, move to reactionary mode and trust your instincts. Let’s face it, we practice for hours and hours and perform on the field for only a couple of minutes. When you are in a pressure situation, trust your training, rely on your instincts, and go for it. What have you got to lose?
2. Remain calm at all times. All of the stories coming out of the plane speak of how “eerily calm” everyone was. Ironic, I was watching Jay Leno on The Tonight Show tonight and he was spoofing a guy on CNN that was twisting a plane back and forth showing how it was probably wobbling. They were cutting to a scene from the movie Airport (I think) where the passengers were crashing and screaming with hysteria. But the reality of this situation was how calm everyone was.
3. Teamwork never fails. Working together we can achieve so much more. From all the passenger accounts, everyone cooperated and filed out of the fuselage of the plane w/o panicking. This prevented stupid injuries and probably saved a couple of lives. If we rely on each other, trust each other, and deliver as promised. We can achieve anything we want.
4. If you see something believe it. I saw an interview w/ the ferry boat driver that rescued the first 60 people. He said his first mate told him he saw something in the water that looked like a plane. They had to have not believed what they were seeing, but they went anyway. They ended up saving tons of peoples lives because of the quick decisions and their ability to believe what they see. How many times do we see something only to doubt it or not react quickly enough? If you see something or feel something, it is probably true, so react.
5. Be there for your fellow man (teammates). Almost instantly rescuers were pulling people from the water. They were throwing life preservers, pulling people into boats, it was amazing to watch. Why? Because that was what needed to be done. Be there, it is one of the easiest things we can do.
The bottom line is comparing this miracle to something so trivial is a bit silly. But it is amazing how so much of life is connected and so many lessons we learn on a daily basis can be applied.
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Bulk Contact of League
Just spent the last hour updating my DialMyCalls.com phone database to make sure every kid in our league is contacted about final registrations this weekend. I scheduled the call to go out at 5:15 PM tomorrow night and the call itself took about 5 minutes to set up tops.
It is a pretty cool system that calls you, you record the message you want sent out, and then you schedule the call. It really is that simple. For larger leagues the fees are minimal, but for teams up to 25 players the site is free! You can place 1 call every day to up to 25 people for free! Pretty cool eh?
Anyway, this and bulk email is a very effective manner to reach out to your league.
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Cardinals, Eagles, Ravens and Steelers, What Can We Learn From Them?
The Arizona Cardinals will be hosting the NFL’s National Conference Championship game after finishing a lowly 8-8 for the regular season. The Eagles, who only got into the playoffs because 14 planets aligned, 3 teams lost, and they beat the Cowboys (thank god!) in the last game of the season, were dead to rights, wouldn’t even be in the playoffs! Now they are traveling to Phoenix to play the Cardinals for the NFC championship!
The other #6 seed, from AFC, the Ravens, beat the Titans, though somewhat controversial, the bottom line is they are going to the championship to play the only remaining top seed the Steelers. So, what can we learn from this mess?
1. If your zone isn’t working, CHANGE IT! Translated to generic coach speak, if your plan isn’t working, you have to have plan B and the guts to pull the trigger and go to it. How many times were the Panthers going to watch Fitzgerald run between the corners and safeties before they got out of the zone or at least put a man on him! He had 180+ yards in the first half!
2. Tis better to take one step backwards and regroup, than to totally implode. How many easily intercepted passes did Eli Manning and Jake Delhomme throw while veterans Donovan McNabb and Kurt Warner took what the defense would give them and at a sack when they had too.
3. It’s the system stupid. For years I have watched the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers dismantle opponents. When both played my Redskins it was painful to watch as they inflicted painful blows all night long. The players change, the systems work. Have a great system and plug your players in to execute it.
4. You have to play good enough to absorb a bad call. Don’t whine about the bad calls that you get, deal with them, move on, and play so good that the call’s don’t matter.
5. Anybody can be anybody on any given day. This is so true, especially in youth sports. You never know who is going to show up! A coach that can mentally convince his kids they are winners has a much more likely shot at winning than a coach full of superstars that never gel. We never have the best teams, but we believe.
6. Team defeats individual effort every time. It doesn’t matter who the stars are if they have no supporting cast. A star w/ a cast can thrive, a star on an island starves.
7. Offense wins games, defense wins championships. Defense, defense, defense. In baseball it is all about pitching and fielding, defense, defense, defense.
What did you learn watching hours and hours of playoff football?
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Volusia County Cutting out JV Sports
This is a travesty. Why would we cut out the one thing that the kids truly love about school? I believe that sport builds character, no matter what sport, eliminating it from schools is horrible. I see tons of fat around schools that could be trimmed w/o cutting out JV sports.
I remember my first year of Soccer in High School. My friends and I were all on the JV team and were very good. We actually won the JV championship, it was sweet! A few of us were selected to move up to the varsity team for the last few games, and though we never even saw the field, the experience was life altering for me!
We had to come to the varsity boys practice, fit in, earn their respect, and train as hard as they did. Talk about life lessons learned! We want to take this away from our kids? This makes not sense at all.
See the article about this here: http://www.cfnews13.com/News/Local/2009/1/7/volusia_schools_cut_jv_sports_cheerleading.html
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Rulebooks for Everyone!
Most of the people that know me well know better than to argue about rules with me. I am wrong on occasion about the rules, (once back in 1988) but for the most part I am a rules nerd. I am not exaggerating when I say I read the softball and baseball rulebooks cover to cover every year when they come out. I actually look forward to it! God I am a geek!
It is a little bit of a joke around town. When an opposing coach or umpire starts to debate a rule w/ me everyone in the stands on my team gets a chuckle. The most common quote heard is “Don’t they know better than to argue the rules with him?” My philosophy is how can you bend and stretch the rules if you do not know them thoroughly?
Anyway, Great News! Little League is making their rulebooks available for purchase by anyone! Only coaches and officials were able to get them before, but now, anyone can buy them! So when you are in the stands and want to argue rules with me, make sure you have your rule book handy! You are going to need it!
Purchase rulebooks from Little League here: http://www.littleleaguestore.net/forms—publications-publications.html
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