Dealing with Coaches as a Team Administrator

[daywalkerdad]

A little backstory...
My daughter is in her 3rd year of travel. She plays on a very competitive team, but we have always done our best to have her play rec ball with our small town. I knew a lot of the rec girls didn't have the opportunity to play on travel teams but there was a desire to learn more and I wanted to support our future high school team so I started a tournament team for these girls. We would do a few tournaments once rec season ended. We ended up adding in a few other girls from neighboring small towns as well. I have said over and over this was development focused. Just have fun and get some game time. I asked the rec coaches to coach, but I have the business license etc under my name and have done all the administrative work.

Ok. We have our first tournament. I think everything went ok. Wasn't happy that a few girls sat the bench all day, but I know it is the first tournament I figured they would figure out how to rotate better.

I run into one of the coaches who tells me they have talked and they will be working with just the core 5 players and that they will be training a new girl privately to take over one of the other girls positions. That 3 of the girls shouldnt play at all and they were going to play 9 bat 9 from now on. They were going to hold separate practice for just those 5 (my daughter was included, but one of our other coaches daughters was not and neither was he). I ended up contacting our head coach and saying I didn't think this was right and was not the purpose of this team and was told if I want him to coach he is coaching to win and I should have informed the players parents that it is competitive not rec ball. I guess I'm just a little shocked. I never would have taken the time to start this if I knew these coaches would flip so quick on girls they trained since tee ball. Any advice on how to deal with this? These kids are so excited and have no clue what is about to happen to them. I don't want to overstep the coaching, but I also started this team with a purpose and want it to be positive for our community, not hurt kids who have been working hard.

1. Tell the coach you appreciate his/her time and efforts but if he wants to continue with your organization he/she will coach for the development of all players.
2. Tell the coach you appreciate his/her time and efforts but his/she services will no longer be needed.

What age range?

 

[RADcatcher]

1. Tell the coach you appreciate his/her time and efforts but if he wants to continue with your organization he/she will coach for the development of all players.
2. Tell the coach you appreciate his/her time and efforts but his/she services will no longer be needed.

What age range?

Like this firm approach! Opportunity to insert a new coach.

If the coach does not want to develop all the players they are welcome to go start something themselves.

People will sort themselves out with the options.

 

[YoungBuck]

What you have is a manager there, not a coach. A coach will help weak players get better, a manager wants good players, hit a few ground balls, then fill out the lineup.
DD ran into this in 12u. She made a real good team based on her hitting. She was weak at fielding. At the end of the season the "coach" says while she's a good hitter, her fielding is weak, so she not gonna play much next season, maybe look for another team. I looked him straight in the eye and said" you're the coach, so coach her to get better, isn't that what your suppose to do? " he had such a dumb look on his face, he didn't know what to say. He was a manager, not a coach. She moved to another team that season.

Most of the 'coaches' I have seen over the last decade from t-ball through college don't know the first thing about helping players improve.

It's easy to degrade the players.

 

[MoJo]

A little backstory...
My daughter is in her 3rd year of travel. She plays on a very competitive team, but we have always done our best to have her play rec ball with our small town. I knew a lot of the rec girls didn't have the opportunity to play on travel teams but there was a desire to learn more and I wanted to support our future high school team so I started a tournament team for these girls. We would do a few tournaments once rec season ended. We ended up adding in a few other girls from neighboring small towns as well. I have said over and over this was development focused. Just have fun and get some game time. I asked the rec coaches to coach, but I have the business license etc under my name and have done all the administrative work.

Ok. We have our first tournament. I think everything went ok. Wasn't happy that a few girls sat the bench all day, but I know it is the first tournament I figured they would figure out how to rotate better.

I run into one of the coaches who tells me they have talked and they will be working with just the core 5 players and that they will be training a new girl privately to take over one of the other girls positions. That 3 of the girls shouldnt play at all and they were going to play 9 bat 9 from now on. They were going to hold separate practice for just those 5 (my daughter was included, but one of our other coaches daughters was not and neither was he). I ended up contacting our head coach and saying I didn't think this was right and was not the purpose of this team and was told if I want him to coach he is coaching to win and I should have informed the players parents that it is competitive not rec ball. I guess I'm just a little shocked. I never would have taken the time to start this if I knew these coaches would flip so quick on girls they trained since tee ball. Any advice on how to deal with this? These kids are so excited and have no clue what is about to happen to them. I don't want to overstep the coaching, but I also started this team with a purpose and want it to be positive for our community, not hurt kids who have been working hard.

It is amazing what people will do because of EGO or MONEY.

 

[Lreeve]

1. Tell the coach you appreciate his/her time and efforts but if he wants to continue with your organization he/she will coach for the development of all players.
2. Tell the coach you appreciate his/her time and efforts but his/she services will no longer be needed.

What age range?

One of the coaches totally has my vision, he has basically been pushed out of the loop. The other two their daughters are pitching now so I think it kinda amped up all this. They are still only pitching like 30-40% strikes...but losing was everyone else's fault apparently.

 

[Lance Steckler]

sounds like the Admin, needs to get a broom out, replace coach and move forward.

 

[CoachCeetar]

imo contact the excluded kids parents directly and have them double down on the pressure to play everyone.

It's hard because tournaments vary, but an alternative could be to form a small league with neighboring towns. There's a lot of work involved, but a few emails could find out if you have a couple of other people with similar goals in mind. With league play, you could control this a little by writing "everyone bats" and "max 3 innings at any one position" and other sort of rules into the situation. You only really need like 3 other teams to sign on and you can have a nice little division. Can still play tournaments too if you like, which would also allow "GOTTA WIN THIS MEANINGLESS THING" bros to get their fix.

The only difference between rec and travel is essentially money allows kids to get more time/reps/games in so they naturally become better.

I dunno what level we're talking here (here we start travel at ~3rd grade) but if kids casually play an extra 10-15 travel games a year, it doesn't take very long for it to look like those kids are more talented. But it's a tautology. Those kids are better cause they got more time, so they get more time because they're better. Or they're simply the older kids. 9-15months of age difference can make a huge physical difference, especially in the late elementary years.

 

[daywalkerdad]

One of the coaches totally has my vision, he has basically been pushed out of the loop. The other two their daughters are pitching now so I think it kinda amped up all this. They are still only pitching like 30-40% strikes...but losing was everyone else's fault apparently.

I was going to guess 10u with coaches having an inflated since kid’s abilities. Many times people think kids are better than what they are and look for reasons as to why team is losing.

If other teams have a similar strike% probably not a huge difference between on base % best hitters to worst.

 

[Lreeve]

I was going to guess 10u with coaches having an inflated since kid’s abilities. Many times people think kids are better than what they are and look for reasons as to why team is losing.

If other teams have a similar strike% probably not a huge difference between on base % best hitters to worst.

It is 12u. They play pretty well against the neighboring teams in our rec league, 8 of our players on the same rec team. My daughter catches and was running all over the backstop and I never once thought to bring up the bad pitching or home not being covered because I knew these kids were learning. I think that is why I was so frustrated when all the negative attitude towards the other players started. I'm fully expecting my daughter to be benched for me speaking up at the next game.

 

[Lreeve]

imo contact the excluded kids parents directly and have them double down on the pressure to play everyone.

It's hard because tournaments vary, but an alternative could be to form a small league with neighboring towns. There's a lot of work involved, but a few emails could find out if you have a couple of other people with similar goals in mind. With league play, you could control this a little by writing "everyone bats" and "max 3 innings at any one position" and other sort of rules into the situation. You only really need like 3 other teams to sign on and you can have a nice little division. Can still play tournaments too if you like, which would also allow "GOTTA WIN THIS MEANINGLESS THING" bros to get their fix.

The only difference between rec and travel is essentially money allows kids to get more time/reps/games in so they naturally become better.

I dunno what level we're talking here (here we start travel at ~3rd grade) but if kids casually play an extra 10-15 travel games a year, it doesn't take very long for it to look like those kids are more talented. But it's a tautology. Those kids are better cause they got more time, so they get more time because they're better. Or they're simply the older kids. 9-15months of age difference can make a huge physical difference, especially in the late elementary years.

This was exactly my reasoning in starting this team. They got 6 games for rec ball this year. I knew they needed more if they want to play in HS. My purpose was just to get them playing more, have fun, and give them a taste of playing at a different level. My daughter will have played 60+ games by the end of the summer. I know for a fact all that playing time has made a huge difference.