Parent Coaches

[Country Boy]

Eliminating teams from consideration solely because a parent coaches them is unfounded. It is no different than choosing against a team with male coaches (Because they've never played) or female coaches (too emotional). Irrational and shortsighted. There are certainly examples of poor coaching by Dad's, just as there are by women, blacks, 30 somethings, brunettes, bald men and bucktoothed alien life forms.

 

[SoAZDad]

Great post Little Angels. How true. Nice to hear it all first-handed from someone with a lot of experience from both sides of the fence.

 

[RubberBiscuit]

Long time lurker. At what age group do you start looking for TB teams that are coached by individuals that do not have daughters on the team? Currently 12U team is experiencing signs of the dreaded "Daddy Ball" syndrome.

So ya can't just stereotype all the Daddy-ball teams. I think we understand that dramatic stance.

BUT we cannot also reject the fact that soooooo many parents see their DD's way different than reality.

Looking back, knowing I have always not counted on the TB organization for pitching lessons for DD, I would first have been more scrutinizing on the batting teachings of a set of coaches before anything else. There are soooo many tb coaches that are BAD batting coaches (my opinion). And I never wanted to commit to full-time seperate pitching AND batting lessons. (did it a little bit though,..the light version)

Then after that confirmation I would look to see if a coach had a DD in one of the critical positions (pitcher/catcher). Because this is where the rose colored glasses can be way too much to tolerate.

So make sure you review the possible daddy-ball stereotype, being ultra-sensitive with pitcher/catcher daughters, but it needs to be weighed in with all the other factors (like psycho-helecoptor-parent-families ...... these are intolerable from my perspective)

 

[Ken Krause]

I was a parent coach, and both of my daughters pitched. But I was very careful about trying to see them for who and what they were. In fact, I was always looking for that pitcher who was better than my daughters, mostly because I knew how competitive they were and how it would cause them to work harder and improve. If they were #2 in effectiveness it wasn't for long.

Being competitive myself, I also wouldn't favor my own daughters by putting them in positions where they couldn't play. For example, my younger daughter played second base for a while when she wasn't pitching. But it became clear that she had too much fear of getting hit by a wayward grounder to stay there. (This was pre-masks for everyone including the scorekeeper.) So I moved her to outfield, where she was much more comfortable. I could've kept her at second, but clearly it wasn't good for her or the team. Especially when I had players who could play the position better.

As for their pitching, it was about who could get the other team out. I never had either one pitch every game, or almost every game. I was early on the whole overuse injury thing, so tried to balance pitching time. Most years I was lucky to have 2.5 pitchers to split the load. Sometimes I had 2, but that was with 2 pitchers contributing .5 each. Best year I had was when my younger daughter and another pitcher were equal in ability, with a third that could give us quality innings. The other girl who was equal was a lefty too, so that was an added bonus.

I have seen great parent coaches, lousy parent coaches, great non-parent coaches, lousy non-parent coaches. I have seen former college players who were terrible coaches and parents who obviously never played in their lives do a great job. I'd say the first thing to look for is a passion for the game. If the coach really seems to love coaching softball, the rest will probably fall into place.

 

[Little Angels Softball]

I have seen great parent coaches, lousy parent coaches, great non-parent coaches, lousy non-parent coaches. I have seen former college players who were terrible coaches and parents who obviously never played in their lives do a great job. I'd say the first thing to look for is a passion for the game. If the coach really seems to love coaching softball, the rest will probably fall into place.

Very well-said, and truthful.

 

[Country Boy]

Let's not forget that quite often the Coach's DD is the best player on the team. Because she lives with a slave driver and is forced to practice daily.

 

[cuzmail]

Let's not forget that quite often the Coach's DD is the best player on the team. Because she lives with a slave driver and is forced to practice daily.

^^^ Man has a point here.

 

[riseball]

Let's not forget that quite often the Coach's DD is the best player on the team. Because she lives with a slave driver and is forced to practice daily.

Practice like at home? On her own? Now that's funny!

 

[GOINGDEEP]

I have seen great parent coaches, lousy parent coaches, great non-parent coaches, lousy non-parent coaches. I have seen former college players who were terrible coaches and parents who obviously never played in their lives do a great job. I'd say the first thing to look for is a passion for the game. If the coach really seems to love coaching softball, the rest will probably fall into place.

I would have never gotten into softball if it wasn't for having a daughter, I think a lot of former BB player dads fall into this category. The only men I saw growing up were the "King and his court" a few times when they came to town. The first "real" men's fast-pitch game I saw was passing a field on the way to play a HS BB game, I remember stopping to look like WTH are those guys doing? My area didn't have a men's league FP, we had a rather large men's BB league where the current and former college players played.

Girls who played FP in HS were not like they are now. The smallest were about 200 and had more facial hair than the boys did. So as a young buck, I had very little interest in the game.

I started coaching my DD at 5 in rec. Our group came in 2nd in the rec World Series as first year 10's. ( like LL ) We traveled on the side since 8u. Won 3 TB A class state tournaments from 10u to 14u, in HS we were the first to ever make it to "state" in 25 years of the program, and then made it 3 years in a row.

The love of the game is not only shared by the coaches, but the ones who are on the field. I've been in some pretty big arenas playing BB, not ONE OF THEM I hold more dear than the time I spent with my daughter and her teammates. Most of my girls are playing college now, when they come to the house or I see them around town when they come back "home", I see those 6-8 year old girls when we had no clue what we were doing..........makes a grown man tear up.