Keeping positive

[WARRIORMIKE]

So our season has been rough. We are currently 0-5 right now. Scores haven't even been close. At this point in the season, how do you keep your girls from remaining positive throughout the season?? I just keep telling them its for the future. That we will become successful later. Now the girls are starting to make comments. "we suck" or "here comes another loss".
I'm getting frustrated a bit cause they are getting frustrated. Not sure what to do. I did plan a bowling dinner this Friday so hopefully the girls can bond a bit. I just don't know. Tonight we have a game against the first place team.

Lets see what happens........

 

[CoogansBluff]

Is this a travel team or league team?

The big difference is that travel teams can manufacture confidence by finding teams that they can beat or play close. League teams can't control their schedules, so they have to get confidence elsewhere.

My daughter played on two winless league (rec) teams before moving to travel ball. For some reason, both teams were still fun, and the players didn't lose confidence. In one case, they were too young to care that much about winning and losing. Just getting one hit or catching one ball made their day. In the other case, they'd played enough to have confidence in themselves individually and could understand that the team was short on pitching and just couldn't win a close game. They had that 'wait'll next year' attitude.

 

[Sweet Lou]

If it is a rec league, break it up into innings.

Tell the girls to play to win each inning.

Keep track of how many "innings" they won/lost/tied and go over that at the end of the game and use that to try and improve next game.

My DDs have played on some bad rec teams. never went winless but one year I think they went 1-14-1 . I think they were like 0-10 before the first win and they celbrated like they won the 7th game of the world series.

 

[sluggers]

You have to keep working, and you have to find the positives. Don't applaud crappy play by your team, but there are always bright spots in any situation.

 

[coachtucc]

There is always a positive. For instance, my team was run rules twice this past weekend. I went home and did the book for the stats. We only scored 3 runs but we also only struck out only 5 times in 30 plate appearances. That means we made contact with the ball more than 80% of the time!! That's a positive that I can tell my team because if we keep doing that the hits will come!!

 

[sleepwalker]

I had a 7-8 year old little league team that started the season similar to yours. I focused on teaching the kids the game and fundamentals. If the ball was hit to our shortstop and he bobbled it 6 times before picking up the ball, I had him throw the ball to 1st base anyways, because that is where the play was supposed to go had he fielded it cleanly. At first, that ended up in being an over throw to 1st base and resulted in the runner advancing to 3rd base. We took our lumps, lost games and made several fielding errors. I always encouraged the kids to make the right play and not quit on the play because of a bobble or an error. Where other teams were being taught to hold the ball when they didn't field it cleanly, we were throwing the ball even though the kid was standing on 1st.

After several failures, we began to have success in making outs. Having success and making outs was contagious. When we started having success, the kids started asking if we could practice more. So we did. We played the unbeated team at the end of the year. The first ball was hit to our shortstop, who bobbled it about 4 times and threw the ball to the 1st base man who jumped in the air and made a great catch. The hitter, who was standing on 1st, when the shortstop threw the ball, took off to 2nd base. The 1st baseman tagged him out and we proceeded to win the game. I lost money after the game because it was double treats. The other team didn't get treats because their coach yelled at them after the game for at least a half hour.

My recommendation would be to teach the girls to succeed a little at a time. Look for the positives. Dare to make plays and make mistakes. Have fun.

 

[brn14me]

haha! I found this website after some soul searching because our team was 0-5. We're now 1-7. I'm a new asst coach on a new team in a rec league. The other teams are returners and frankly pretty good. Our kids are 6-8 years old and we were losing pretty badly, had a few close games but we ended up having to restructure how we address the games as coaches. It's been a good learning process....as far as the kids go, I had set up a reward system. I printed up awards for "Player of the Game" "Hustling every play" and "Keeping your head in the game". My daughter saw the awards and wasn't too impressed so we added anyone that gets an award also gets something from the treasure box, and I went to the dollar store.

It's been 3 games with this, the kids love the treasure box and the parents love the kids getting an award. I think it's helped some of them play better because they keep asking "did you bring the treasure box?" "Yup, let's see if you can win it today" Sure enough we got our first win this past Saturday.... Our league allows airbrushed helmets so the helmet sticker wasn't an option but I read about that here too....give helmet stickers for good plays, and award them liberally.

Best of luck to you and your girls

 

[WARRIORMIKE]

Well we took another lump last night. However before the game ended I got an email, I found out that we have not allowed the most runs against us for the current season at this time.........

I did take the advise of each innings. That didn't play to well, but we will try to use it again against tomorrows team

 

[CoachKevin]

Well we took another lump last night. However before the game ended I got an email, I found out that we have not allowed the most runs against us for the current season at this time.........

I did take the advise of each innings. That didn't play to well, but we will try to use it again against tomorrows team

Heck I use that for our 16A team.... win the inning, win enough innings you win the game. Believe me I feel your pain, in HS the team is playing poorly we are 4-10 right now 1-3 in League. Seems like the coaches are not the most positive and you can see it in the players. Just keep at it, you can still teach the game and remain positive.