Establishing Yourself as a Youth Coach
A youth coach must command respect immediately from youth athletes, most of whom have a small attention span. By following three rules, you’ll establish yourself as the authority and create a great playing experience for the team.
1. Be firm with your players and let them know in no uncertain terms that you are the leader of the team.
Discipline and organized activity enhances and nurtures a learning environment. Kids will respond to that controlled atmosphere and enjoy it, and automatically improve their play because of it. If you allow misbehavior and child play you will lose them for the season and both the coaching and playing experience will be miserable.
2. Learn every player’s name.
It was one of the first things I was taught when I started coaching. I had to learn everyone’s name the same day I met them. Kids feel like a part of a team right away when that happens, and it makes coaching them a little easier, because they feel the coach already knows them.
3. Never use a whistle.
Let players get used to the sound of your voice. You aren’t a referee, and sometimes players construe whistle sounds as catching them in the act of doing something wrong. A good voice can project positive authority, so use it!
Dave Rosene By implementing various teaching and coaching methods depending on the athlete's skill level and body type, Dave Rosene identifies and corrects errors in skill technique. Leave a Comment
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Dave, do you have any advice on how to handle parents that are issuing advice from the stands? I have one parent that yells out to her son to do something different than what we are teaching, right in the middle of a situation drill. I have another parent that keeps yelling back elbow up, when we are following your method of batting stance/load.
Should I stop right in the middle of practice, causing a scene, or just ignore the parent? Part of me wants to say, if they want to keep teaching their own child the wrong way, there isn’t much I can do. I don’t want to fight with my parents over this stuff.
Jeff, thanks for contacting me. This is always a difficult situation because everyone is an expert when it comes to baseball and teaching skills though most adults only watch games and never have taken the time to do research on what the correct techniques for individual skills are and the procedures on how to teach them.
If you are being interrupted in the middle of a drill during practice, I would stop practice, tell the person why we are doing it this way, and if you want to donate your time we would love to have you on staff. If not there is only one voice. You never want kids confused who the coach and leader is.
If the parent continues to show up at practice and offers conflicting and wrong advice, there are two ways to handle that. Both are harsh but I have done them. Stop practice until the parent excuses him/herself, or ask the parent to leave immediately. Again, parents’ opinions mean nothing when you are the one in charge of the entire TEAM at every practice and game. If they wanted to coach they should have volunteered.
As far as the back elbow comment, you talk to the violator after the game and explain why that is the wrong technique and give them sources to verify. I always ask where the shouters got the back elbow advice and invariably the answer is ‘I just heard it.’ You basically are dealing with mostly uninformed people.
Hope this helps. Contact us anytime, and thanks for caring so much.