How do you define success on the field.

[Greenmonsters]

Seems that I've taken a more esoteric view

Success as a player means practicing and playing to the best of your ability while putting the team first
Success as a coach means working to get the best out of each of your players to achieve collective team goals

I believe you can have a successful player (or coach) on a losing team.
I believe you can have an unsuccessful player (or coach) on a winning team.
I believe that you can be a good, successful player, but that not all successful players are good.

 

[riseball]

Seems that I've taken a more esoteric view

Success as a player means practicing and playing to the best of your ability while putting the team first
Success as a coach means working to get the best out of each of your players to achieve collective team goals

I believe you can have a successful player (or coach) on a losing team.
I believe you can have an unsuccessful player (or coach) on a winning team.
I believe that you can be a good, successful player, but that not all successful players are good.

Well said. Could not agree with you more.

 

[SCDad]

OK. So it is about you. You gauge your success by what your DD does in athletics, as in writing above: parlaying, we, I have, us, getting respect? Or did you do something yourself that I missed?! Are you the coach?

I am not a coach.

All to often travel folks are faced with a choice. Have my DD play SS For a mediocre team. Or play RF for a championship team.

Most every time the travel DD will play SS.

We chose different. We chose RF and won championships. She belonged. Is a great bat, and all knew she is a key part. It is not like DD is an afterthought.

So that is my definition of success. The people around her love her. My past and present life is great. Softball respect abounds. Except for the ones who do not know DD, and have never won theirs.

Just a different perspective. In the club. Always part of the club. Many who are individually better than DD secretly hate use. But if I see them on the street ... I will always shake their hand and tell them how their DD was much better than mine. But rarely, if ever, will they acknowledge the sacrifices made to win championships.

But they know. They do know. But will never acknowledge. It is so funny to me how proud, stubborn, and sometimes refuse to honor, the travel softball world is.

The other part is speaking to parents who win multiple championships. THEY get it. Always acknowledge DDs championships. Never is her play looked down upon. She is only looked down upon by better players who have been too selfish in there career, to take a back seat, or focus only on having the best players around her.

It is about my DD talking the talk, walking the walk, And learning what it takes to be a champion. I am just a Dad whq enjoys for a brief period of time in our family life to be honored as a family to be champions. Once it happens, to us more than once, you quickly realize that playing SS or RF ... Batting 3rd or 6th ... Means so little. Your focus shifts dramatically to getting the gold ring. All your powers are focused to that goal.

OF COURSE it is about the honor DD does for the family. Who does not think that? All too often though folks get wrapped up in batting average ... Scholarships ... Other things (behavior)? I get my honor. If you want to make it about me living my life through DD ... You are darn right. I am an old man. Get mine in the professional world. In the general community ... My DD earned most of it for me.

 

[NVfishing]

Success on the field could have so many different meanings to so many people. My DD's team has had success even though some people may not believe it. We've grown as a team. All the players have been getting better. At the beginning of the year we had 6 or 7 players that were new. They would watch every pitch go by. Now they stand in there and compete. My DD has gained as a player. She's learned two new positions.

 

[Jeff Gamesman]

A successful day at the plate or on the field is when the coaches desired expectation of the player is matched(or in some instances exceeded) by the players execution...regardless if the stats are a thing of beauty or not. Though my role as a parent of two young daughters, changes my perspective a bit in that I would add that I also want to see growth both in quality of performance, game understanding, and their ability to enjoy the game and have fun.

 

[PA SB Dad]

I have defined success by a very simple metric - Progress, not Perfection.

 

[02Crush]

I set three personal goals for each of my players after 1 month of practice during the beginning of the year. I then ask them to give me three personal goals. I keep track of them and review to see how they/we did on these by years end (playing TB). I also have team goals for us and what I want to accomplish. I gauge my success in how the players developed. This past year I succeeded with 9 and failed with one. I just cold not figure out what motivated her. So far I have coached 10U and 12U and I know this strategy will change as they get older but for now it matters to me how the player develops. I do not coach for "wins" all of the time and it drives people nuts around me. However, I believe that "love of the game", reps at core skills in these ages and learning to work within a TEAM setting matter most for later days when Winning becomes more critical.

We were at a D1 college game this past Spring and as our team was getting autographs of the players of said team, one player asked what age we were. One of our players said 12U. To which the college player said, "Geesh, when we played 12U I don't think we won anything. We were horrible." Yet here she was, a starter for a D1 national contender. I think sometimes we want them to grow up so fast that we over look a lot of core development and use the "playing the best will make us better" statement as a swap for actually coaching/teaching on an individual level. I like to think that this D1 player had a good coach focused on player development in her early days that hopefully set a foundation for her to choose to have a future in the sport.

 

[coachjwb]

While the first gut reaction for me is to say "winning", it really can't be just about that. There are so many factors that come into that equation including first and foremost the relative talent of the two teams when they were first formed, and not far behind "luck" (I will explain that in a minute). To me, it's all about improvement and execution.

Coaching youth softball is not the same as coaching a professional sports team where there are systems in place like drafts and salary caps to facilitate at least some semblance of everyone starting from a similar place. In youth softball, there is often a wide disparity of talent between teams. Those of us who have been around awhile have probably all been blessed at one time with very talented teams and teams that were not as talented. While over time good coaching can recruit and attract better talent, that's not always the case. Our job as coaches is to take the talent we have and make it better. A lot of posts above speak to that, so nothing new.

But the other part of our game that I think a lot of people ignore is that it's a game of inches, actually millimeters in a lot of respects ... how well a pitcher can paint the corners one day vs. another, how the ump that day is calling the strike zone, how well a batter can hit the ball on the sweet spot, and whether a hit ball, hit solidly or not, finds a hole. I don't mean to imply it's all luck, but we all know that one day your best hitter may go 4-4 and the next day she can go 0-4 and hit the ball just as well, just at people. The point is that there are a ton of factors, I think more so in softball and baseball than other sports, that determine how two relatively equal talented teams do from one day to the next and who ultimately wins the game, especially if it's shortened due to time limits. So the only thing you can really go on is execution ... how well did the pitcher hit her spots that day regardless if it was called a strike, a ball or hit out of the ball park ... how good of a swing did the batter put on the ball and how solidly they made contact ... how well the fielders made the plays they had a reasonable chance to make, etc.

Unfortuanately, there's not a lot of great stats to measure either improvement or execution, but in my mind, these are two things that best define success as a coach.

 

[nanotech14]

OK. So it is about you. You gauge your success by what your DD does in athletics, as in writing above: parlaying, we, I have, us, getting respect? Or did you do something yourself that I missed?! Are you the coach?

I wish I could give you more thank you's on this post for such a great response on SCDad's post. But I have a feeling SCdad will say it is just because we are losers, not a winner like him.

 

[nanotech14]

I am not a coach.

All to often travel folks are faced with a choice. Have my DD play SS For a mediocre team. Or play RF for a championship team.

Most every time the travel DD will play SS.

We chose different. We chose RF and won championships. She belonged. Is a great bat, and all knew she is a key part. It is not like DD is an afterthought.

So that is my definition of success. The people around her love her. My past and present life is great. Softball respect abounds. Except for the ones who do not know DD, and have never won theirs.

Just a different perspective. In the club. Always part of the club. Many who are individually better than DD secretly hate use. But if I see them on the street ... I will always shake their hand and tell them how their DD was much better than mine. But rarely, if ever, will they acknowledge the sacrifices made to win championships.

But they know. They do know. But will never acknowledge. It is so funny to me how proud, stubborn, and sometimes refuse to honor, the travel softball world is.

The other part is speaking to parents who win multiple championships. THEY get it. Always acknowledge DDs championships. Never is her play looked down upon. She is only looked down upon by better players who have been too selfish in there career, to take a back seat, or focus only on having the best players around her.

It is about my DD talking the talk, walking the walk, And learning what it takes to be a champion. I am just a Dad whq enjoys for a brief period of time in our family life to be honored as a family to be champions. Once it happens, to us more than once, you quickly realize that playing SS or RF ... Batting 3rd or 6th ... Means so little. Your focus shifts dramatically to getting the gold ring. All your powers are focused to that goal.

OF COURSE it is about the honor DD does for the family. Who does not think that? All too often though folks get wrapped up in batting average ... Scholarships ... Other things (behavior)? I get my honor. If you want to make it about me living my life through DD ... You are darn right. I am an old man. Get mine in the professional world. In the general community ... My DD earned most of it for me.

okay wow, you need to step back and look at both of your post. You are that parent and that kind of shallow person. You don't mind your dd riding the coat tails of those that work hard. I take your post as, "Why should my dd work hard, let the other girls do it for her."