We definitely have that here in MN. During the winter season everything is local community hockey programs playing against other community hockey programs. But once spring hits you get everything from 3-on-3 leagues to AAA club hockey. I know the 2014 birth year kids in my son’s grade played in 5 tournaments last summer with some of the sites including Boston, Chicago and somewhere in Canada.
I have always been an Assistant Coach and always hear about the complaints to the HC. Usually its only 1 parent per season. One HC did it one season and then was done. He had coached Travel Ball for his older boys and found it difficult to manage the younger kids and the parents. Some felt he yelled too much. It was mostly yelling about kids to pay attention so they dont get hurt. Even my Son got moved from 2nd base to the outfield bc for some of the season bc he couldn't focus and the HC didn't want him taking a ball to the face. I would suggest being a Assistant first and see if you can handle only about half the kids actually listening to you.
The downfall of the American athlete. Win at all costs starting at 6 years old is so totally fucking absurd and destroys development. Half the kids who are big and dominant at 6-12 years old get lapped when puberty happens and everyone else catches up in size, then you've got the kids who've been small that just don't care about sports at all because they were overlooked for years. I help coach my son's coach pitch team, our league also has "advanced coach pitch" where they keep score etc. for the older 6/younger 7 year olds. In our league you get 10 pitches until you "strike out" which I think is pretty fair. Dude we played on Monday was a hardo and would only give his kids 5 pitches. His first 6 kids struck out, we had told him there was no issue giving them more pitches but he was set on 5. To each their own, but the kids have a noticeably better time when they get to hit the ball and put it in play. Some of these dudes think they're Joe Torre out there trying to win 7 year old little league games and it's completely absurd.
There are actual fights between crazy parents around here. One of the guys I work with suggested just standing by the right field fence.
Luckily I haven't seen any of that in Rec Ball but It wouldn't surprise me with Travel Ball in the Gwinnett Area.
At that age (I'm guessing he's around 6?), you have to ask yourself whether or not you can effectively communicate and teach a group of kids at that age. Go sub in a 1st grade classroom for a day or even do Great American Teach-In and you'll know the answer real quick. Your job is to teach, build confidence, and let them have fun. In my experience, the parent part is easier (for the team you're coaching at least) if you set expectations and boundaries beforehand.
Would def stay away. Let him play on his own away from you to see if he’s actually into getting better at baseball or he’s doing it as a way to bond with you. Make sure he doesn’t develop any bad habits, but you don’t want to get into a Marinovich situation.
I have a really hard time not coaching my kids' teams, especially sports I played. for baseball/softball right now I'm head coach on two teams and assistant on the other. soccer I have an easier time staying away as I'll coach one kid a season and that's it.
If I wasn’t already coaching a school sport, I would be like this. The fact that Athens is also coaching the HS team his son would play for adds an extra layer to it. You don’t want to be the only voice he’s ever heard on the game if you care about him developing an independent drive to improve and get better. I’ve had too much experience dealing with travel ball parents who can’t let go to think a guy who does all the rec coaching AND school ball coaching will have a kid come out the other side normal.
It depends on your personality type but the kids need people who actually know how to be a coach out there. You might be kicking yourself if your kid gets drafted by some douchebag who only wants to plug his kid into the premiere spots and win at all cost or you get a dude out there who doesn't give a shit and everyone wastes their time for 5 hours a week. It is a fine line to walk with kids that young but if you have the skillset for it you should give it a shot.
I have a couple friends who are professional coaches or scouts at various levels and they both usually try to find someone to work with who is good with dealing with the parents and fun for the kids and then they act as an assistant and lead all the technical stuff.
This is the worst and is why I coached my kids various sports a few times when they were younger. Then I had to make the conscious effort not to be the douchebag who puts his kid in all the premiere spots. Flag football was probably the most difficult for this because my son was the only kid on the team that could throw a ball farther than 5 ft that was accurate and catchable. Thankfully, he wanted to play other positions too and at that age (6 at the time) it was much easier to call running plays, so it was easier to get every kid fairly equal touches. But he gets frustrated with the flag team he's on now because almost every play (pass and run) goes to 2 kids. When he asks to play QB, the coach won't let him because the kid playing QB (his son) really can't do much else besides stand there and throw.
I have always been an assistant and we have been lucky to have mostly good HCs that get it. One bad one can spoil your whole season.
When I was playing baseball growing up, one of the dad's of a kid I played with would stand by himself along either the left or right field line. He was a super nice guy and pretty social normally, but when the game was going on he stood by himself and never talked to anyone. I always thought it was weird when I was a kid. Now I realize he was the smartest guy at the field.
I can tell you from experience that a couple of bad soccer coaches in a row can ruin soccer for a 10 year old who was the first player picked in the leagues draft as a 9 year old. He doesn't even want to consider playing soccer next season
Feel like this is the trade off with finding a more serious/travel team. The quality of the coaching is likeley better. My daughter has played soccer the last few falls.. league sends out emails begging people to coach teams. My buddy gets similar emails in his son's basketball league. Hats off to the people that do it but I'm sure they have no idea what's going on.
This year my daughter's league (lowest possible level) had a parent volunteer do all the logistical stuff and a hs kid teach them drills and stuff. Seemed fine.
we had a high school kid coaching our basketball team and it wasn't a great experience. (7U) he was just there because his little brother was on the team and his dad thought it would be cute or whatever. he was pretty checked out and didn't care to really coach the kids after a week or two.
I used to coach my little brother’s team. There are 14 years between us so I was a bit older than HS when I did it but it was freaking adorable.
Played the area rich kids with a league full of legit psychopath parents. That’s $3000 in bats for the 9U team.
See lots of Travel Teams at the batting cages and they all have this same bat. It’s crazy! I treat bats like I do golf clubs. Buy a year or two older models on sale.
In my day and age we were lucky to have 2 good TPXs and 1 bootleg Easton on a team and we shared. AND WE LIKED IT.
Those are the Hype Fire bats that are the hottest bats in the game (according to a few YouTubers). Do they help? Yes Are they that much better than other bats in the same class? Nope Can your kid hit the ball hard/consistently enough for it to matter? Absolutely not
That’s one nice thing about my kid playing tennis. Sure the racket is expensive, but once they find one they like they just have to be restrung. Plus you can demo models then decide to buy. Seems like these baseball kids buy a new 300-400 bat every year.
As a 12 year old, my team had two bats. Easton Reflex (old bat) and Easton Redline (new bat). This was for 11 players.
I remember when I found two bats at goodwill and I was super excited when my dad was feeling generous and bought them both for me. One needed new grip. So he taught me how to do that. Neither one had a name or label on it anymore, so I have no idea what brand they were
Went up 6-2 after 2 Spoiler Collapsed in the 3rd and lost 9-7 But, yes, we are the rag tag nobodies compared to most of the leagues around us
Now I get the conversation. It's the same thing in hockey. You see these parents with kids who are barely cracking low level travel teams paying $300 for a stick every 6 months when they aren't good enough for it to make any difference from the $50 version.
These are the same parents (dad's( that will go out and buy the newest driver and set of irons thinking it's the equipment that will help their game, without ever taking a single actual golf lesson in their lives.
These kids (9 yo) have all had private lessons for years because their dads don’t want to do any work themselves. Unfortunately, throwing money at baseball is effective until about age 11-12.
My kid is rocking a Sherwood 5000 wood stick. Pretty sweet. His backup is an Easton composite I cut down from one of my old sticks. And it’s an entry level composite stick I probably got off clearance. I’ll probably cave and get a $100 stick soon though. I’m going to try to go to the iceplex this week when I’m down there.
There are kids walking around our league with roller bags that have 2-3 bats a piece in them. Insanity
Stick technology is maxed out. Get your kid whatever brand he wants but from 2ish years ago and it will be the exact same thing as the $300 model.
Found the way to get everyone to hate you equally tonight. We have a rule of a lightning strike inside 8 miles we have to clear the fields until 30 minutes after the last strike. I get a call tonight to check and it was 7.4 away but it was clear and sunny so I waited a few minutes to see what was it was going. Checked again and it was now closer. So I go and tell the refs and blow the horn to clear the fields. Every single person that came up to me argued about it. Check again and it’s now 5 miles away. Eventually get the fields clear and some people still walk out there like they just don’t process there’s literally no one else on the field. I did get to yell at 2 people I don’t like so that was nice. El Tiburon can attest at how the people were tonight
I seen dad's pull up with literal carts filled with different baseball bats and shit. It's a freaking rec league get over yourself.
When I coached we had a pretty good little team and placed pretty high in national tournaments like Cooperstown. When they were 12U we couldn’t really find any decent fall tournaments around so we ended up taking the team to play in a local rec league. After the first game playing our age they kept moving us up until we played at the 16U level. It was dogshit competition but it was hilarious having to pull out a screen to put in front on the pitcher so he wouldn’t get killed pitching to kids that drove themselves there. We had to play at their base difference but we pitched from 50’ and they used the regular 60.5’ We were asked not to come back the next year.
Has been happening here in Australia recently. Games have had to be abandoned due to parents of players and players of particular clubs misbehaving badly. Can't mention the clubs here because they are under investigation by one of the leagues we umpire in
Email from yesterday. I replaced the names with player and parent Formally sending an email to let you know Player has been removed from my team due to the altercation instigated by his father , parent, this afternoon. I approached him during half time of the game to ask that he stop coaching the kids from the sidelines going against the instructions I was giving them. He made a threat at that point and I walked away. Then after the game he approached me again asking if I wanted to finished the conversation in the parking lot. I asked him to stop embarrassing his son and the league to which he replied “I will kick your ass right here. I will kill you”. At that point I told him you will hear from the league. I have copied two witnesses which are other parents on my team that were standing with me having a conversation after the game, while my wife was buying sno-cones for all the kids after the game.