Tag Archives: Baseball coaching

July 18, 2023 · 6:49 PM

Fourth of July Baseball, 1981

On the Fourth of July 2023, I mowed the lawn.

It was 97 degrees and the “feels-like” temperature hovered around 104. Yes, it was hot. 

It was especially hot for an old Bubba like me. But I had what they call in sports and in rocket science, a “window of opportunity”, so I drank a lot of water and got the job done before the evening’s festivities began.

While mowing, my mind often wanders. Sometimes my brain rants. Sometimes it attempts to solve highly complex problems. But sometimes it kicks up memories of things not remembered for years.

In this particular instance, it was a trip down memory lane to the Fourth of July, 1981, and an American Legion baseball doubleheader road trip to the Fort Leavenworth Army base in Leavenworth, KS.

If memory serves, we only had 9, maybe 10, players make the 45-minute drive with our coaches to Leavenworth that day for a noon first pitch. Four or five players couldn’t make it because of family commitments or work. The legendary Kansas Hall of Fame baseball coach, Dennis “Harpo” Hurla was our manager. This was back in the day before he was a legend. Back then, Dennis was just a great baseball coach and a fabulous human; his well-deserved legendary status would come with time. I think our assistant coaches, “Easy” Ed Hernandez and Dom Dumovich, also traveled with us that day.

It was hot. Triple digits. We were smack dab in a month-long heat wave that eventually convinced my dad it was time to upgrade to central air conditioning. That had to be some serious heat (and maybe a little bit of whining from the family) if it convinced my dad to spend money on air conditioning. 

There was a great crowd on the Fort Leavenworth base that day, even though 90% of onlookers were there for the holiday festivities on the post and not to watch a bunch of rowdy, 17-18-year-old baseball players play.

Inside my 58-year-old brain, I feel we swept the doubleheader. I know we at least won one game because we almost always won at least one game, right? I remember being completely drained physically at the end of the second game. This was before the time when everyone felt the need to make every senior-level baseball field a mini, professional-grade baseball field. The infield was dirt. The outfield was dry, sun-burnt grass. The kicker, however, was the dugouts, which were the open-air, chain-link fence versions with no roof or sun protection. In short, it was miserably hot with no means of escape until the final out of the final inning.

After the game, we packed up the gear with the normal high school boy smack-talking and giving Harpo crap about his talent for scheduling games at the worst times of day under the worst environmental conditions. We carried the team gear and our gear to Harpo’s red and white VW van. He must have felt sorry for us or maybe he appreciated the fact we showed up and played the games because, shortly after pulling out of the Ft. Leavenworth front gate onto K-7 highway, he flicked on the right blinker and turned into Pizza Hut. I can still visualize him turning around in the driver’s seat with that million-dollar smile of his, and asking, “Boys, how about some pizza?”

Our mothers would have been impressed with the speed at which nine teenage boys threw off their sweaty and stinky t-shirts, slapped on a clean one dug from the recesses of their bags, and headed for the Pizza Hut door. The blast of cold air as I stepped into the restaurant and the smell of pizza wafting through the air is a memory I hope never slips from my neural storage. 

Never before had ice-cold Pepsi from the tap tasted so refreshing. 

Never before had a pizza been so utterly satisfying. 

There may have been a shared pitcher of beer somewhere in the mix for the 18-year-olds (wink wink) only. The camaraderie around those two tables in an almost empty Pizza Hut restaurant on a blistering Fourth of July baseball road trip evening is the essence of what sports and teams are about. Good times.

As I finished mowing and sat in the shade with my mental faculties firmly back in 2023, I smiled at the memory of that summer day in 1981. I smiled thinking about those teammates. I smiled thinking about Easy Ed and Dom. I smiled thinking about Dennis “Harpo” Hurla and the opportunity he gave me to enjoy baseball at a high level. Mostly, I thought about ice-cold Pepsi, a belly full of pizza, and a day spent playing the game I loved with the best teammates one can hope to spend time with. 

I also thought of young athletes today existing in our uber-connected cyber society. A hope I have is the younger generations of players don’t miss the experiences these lifetime connections offer as they navigate the slippery slope that is the modern corporate youth sports model.

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June 23, 2023 · 4:04 PM

Transitions

I recently sat with a friend for a few peaceful minutes at our grandsons’ t-ball game. It was classic 4-6-year-old baseball. Bat hits the ball (after several violent swings with the bat knocking over just the tee) and it rolls across the infield. None of the dozen or so defenders in the field are paying attention because military helicopters are maneuvering in the airspace over town. Defying all laws of friction and physics, the ball rolls all the way to the outfield grass. Upon verbal prodding from the coaches, a group of defenders races to the ball and devolve into a scrum fighting over who gets to throw the ball to first base. One player eventually wrestles control of the ball and throws it within a city block of first base while another melts into tears in the outfield because that was “my ball”. The first baseman chases down the ball after verbal prodding from the coaches and launches it in the general direction of home plate where the next batter is waiting. (Thank God for backstops!) 

The process is repeated until every batter on both teams has batted three times and then the teams line up, shake hands, and sprint to the dugout where the postgame treats are waiting.

A nearby parent mentioned to me how her husband, who is helping to coach one of the t-ball teams playing, privately mentioned to her how the way his kid and the others play drives him crazy. I laughed and agreed. I told her it was all about transitions. It’s the steps one has to go through to learn something new. Sports, or any other endeavor, are about improving through a series of transitions. We can also call it “leveling up”.  

It’s the Fail Cycle. Try something. Fail. Step back. Evaluate. Work hard. Try again. Repeat until successful. Try something harder. 

In baseball, there are transitions.

  1. No idea how to play the game to the t-ball basics.
  2. T-ball basics to coach or machine pitch.
  3. Coach or machine pitch to kid pitch. A (HUGE transition landmark that can be very frustrating to watch and has been known to burn the eyeballs of the fans.)
  4. Kid pitch to full-on competitive baseball.
  5. The challenging transitions as one progresses up the competitive baseball ladder. 

One of the harsh realities of sports is you work through the transitions to level up or you don’t and stagnate. These transitions get progressively harder and often become the point where individuals quit playing the game. Middle school to high school to college to the minor leagues to the major leagues all involve challenging transition periods for the athlete. 

Transition periods are always challenging and rarely things of beauty.   

As an adult or advanced player in any sport, it’s often frustrating to coach or parent inexperienced individuals. There’s often an assumption the kids know what they should be doing. As adults on the other end of the playing rainbow arc, the exit side, we often forget that kids beginning their journey on the entry side don’t know what we know and can’t do what we do. They’re on the uphill side of that playing arc, with emphasis on uphill, looking and searching for handholds and footholds to move upward and onward in their playing career. These handholds and footholds often take time for each individual to find.

They need a guide through the transitions. That is where coaches and parents do their work. That’s where instead of frustration, you teach and encourage. You work to develop and perfect the developmental skills of the game. The parent and coach must nurture trust and drive in each individual. 

You must listen and trust their judgment and decisions while only gently nudging when absolutely necessary. This is important because they need to have the agency and freedom to pursue their dreams as far as they want to go with them. The higher the leveling up goes, the more it requires hard work, sacrifice, and risk to reach the next handhold on the steepest developmental slope where competition is most fierce. 

Moral of the story. Next time you’re at a beginner-level event, whether sports, music, art, etc., remember this particular event is an early transition, not a finished and polished product. Enjoy the ride because tomorrow’s performance is often better than today’s, even if today’s performance consisted of 50 pitches with only 12 of those being close enough to home plate to be called a strike. 

Celebrate the baby steps. Transitions are just part of any journey.

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June 11, 2022 · 8:15 AM

Filtering

I listened to former MLB pitcher Mike Boddicker on a Kansas City sports radio this week and he said something that activated my coaching radar. With his years of pitching expertise, the host asked him to theorize why the Kansas City Royal’s young pitchers were struggling so much. Thoughtfully, he responded that perhaps too much information was being fed into their heads. He said with so much to think about swimming in their heads while on the mound, their physical performance suffers.

Bingo! I think Mike Boddicker might be onto something here. I’ve written many times about this before in sports. Most sports are doing things not thinking things. That’s why things like muscle memory and daily practice are so important. When a player is on the field in the action of a game, thinking, in particular overthinking, is bad news.

Professional sports and sports, in general, are becoming more and more data-driven. In my opinion, this is a very good thing. Having the information to make better choices about strategy and resources is never a bad thing. The problem we get into as coaches and as organizations is we fall in love with the data but we fail to implement the filtering of the data to our players or team members. 

Filtering?

It’s when the people at the top end of the organizational ladder analyze all the available data and “filter” the relevant data to the relevant people. In a perfect world, by the time the information gets to the individual player, only the most relevant information that individual needs to do their job is in their head. That player then practices within that context, repeating the action again and again until they improve, and then takes it to the field without having to actively think about it.

You can also think about filtering as an informed simplification. As Detective Joe Friday said, “Just the facts, ma’am.”

Filtering is a lesson I learned as a green, somewhat dumb, and often overly-enthusiastic baseball and football coach. The hitters I coached didn’t need to have the dozens and dozens of physical cues involved in a swing swirling in their heads as the pitch was delivered. They needed only to load, step, and swing to attack the baseball. The mind can be a terrible thing when bogged down with too much information.

From experience, I know if I’m in the box thinking about where my feet are, what position my hands are in, if my weight is transferred, and, on top of that, the scouting report on what this pitcher likes to throw 1-2, I’m probably going to be taking a leisurely walk back to the dugout leaving the tying run on second base.

Thinking too much diminishes performance.

Same for football. Fast (quick) explosive high school football is the way we wanted to play the game. It’s the way we developed our players every day with everything we did from warmups to conditioning. We also knew the value of scouting and film study in order to give us the advantage to make up for what we lacked in sheer size and speed. The hours and hours of film breakdown of an opponent was a lot of information. Too much information for your average high school male athlete. Hence, we learned to filter. 

Although we knew as defensive coaches that on third and four in a shotgun spread formation with the back on the left and the right guard, #63, sitting slightly back on his haunches meant they were going to run their bread and butter, QB counter to the left, pushing all that info into a 17-year-old’s head probably meant that the 17-year-old was going to freeze on the field. Coach Dail Smith used to call it, “paralysis by analysis”. Busy minds = Slow feet.

To avoid paralysis by analysis, what do you do? You filter. In the example above, we knew all that information as coaches. Since the QB counter seemed to be one of their bread and butter plays, it was put into the top 6-8 run plays for the scout offense to run all week. We’d teach the linebackers to notice when the guards were sitting back on their haunches and attack. Basically, we take the 4-5 scout details and break them down to one or two for the players, work the recognition and skills repeatedly, and give them the best chance of succeeding during the game. And if we forced the opposing team to go to something other than their bread and butter plays? That was the icing on the cake. 

If you can beat me with your second, third, or fourth-best packages, you deserve to win. If you beat me with your bread and butter packages, I deserve to lose.

Data is cheap in today’s digital world. Programs like HUDL are so freaking awesome and provide so much data to a coach at any level. Sabermetrics and analytics are a sports nerd’s dream. But the downside is the sheer, daunting amount of data we generate. The important work for the modern coach and organization is to sift through the data, decide what’s important and who it’s important to, and then pass it down. A little bit of salt makes the stew better, but a handful of salt ruins it.

Filter the information to your players. Give them the basic knowledge they need without throwing a wrench into the gears of performance. Too much on-field thinking, paralysis by analysis, is a dangerous thing. Prepare your players, practice, and turn them loose to perform. 

Mike Boddicker might be right about what’s wrong with all these talented, young arms in the Royals’ system. Simplify and let the physical talent shine.

Load. Step. Swing.

Sifting gold in a cabin, 13 Eldorado, Yukon Territory, 1898. (Asahel Curtis, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

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April 26, 2022 · 7:56 PM

The Favorite Place to Play

Coaches should always have a favorite place to play. This favorite place should trickle down to their entire team and organization. Everyone from the assistants to the players to the support staff should share a passion for this place.
What is the place?
Simple. It’s wherever the next game on the schedule is.
Because that’s what it’s all about. Getting your team ready to play the next game wherever it is.
Any other concerns, worries, or complaints steer the ship off course. There’s already a lot of other stuff to deal with in getting ready to play a game, especially at the high school or youth sports level, to detract from the goal of reaching that favorite place. A coach’s actions and demeanor matter. Negative thoughts spread to teenage athletes before anything can be done to prevent it and affect performance.
There’s a certain special feeling going to a game and seeing the field or the lights or the arena waiting ahead. A favorite kind of place lies ahead.
Anticipation. A touch of nerves. The heart quickens. It’s a special feeling.
So what’s a coach to do?
Put their head down and go to work whether you’re playing on the most pristine of fields or on something barely suitable as a landfill site.
Get ready for the next game, wherever and whenever it is.
Make the places and spaces we inhabit better. Leave a mark. All day, every day.
Isn’t that what life’s all about?
Above all else, enjoy the ride!

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November 3, 2019 · 9:38 AM

Fun? What do you mean, fun?

There’s been a coaching riddle that has perplexed me since 2002. The concept of “fun” in sports. It started way back when a very talented group of players were underachieving and had fallen into poor practice habits. After a players-only meeting to figure out their ideas to achieve more from practice in order to perform better in games, one of the three things listed was they weren’t having “fun” at practice. More recently, I’ve heard many a player who chose not to go out for a particular sport they’ve participated in previously, give their reasoning as “it’s not fun.”

Over the years, I’ve gone from utter disbelief (What do you want, a cake and a friggin’ party?”) to old man-get-off-my-lawn (It’s this stupid video game generation?”) to finally over the last few years wanting to study and figure out what “fun” actually means to a youth athlete. 

What struck me earlier this year was in order to put my thumb on the problem of fun, I needed to quit looking at the issue from the perspective of a middle-aged, white guy and try to turn back the mental clock to think like a teenage boy. It was scary at times and it was not always family-friendly content, but what I discovered was very telling. I discovered from my experiences as a teenage athlete to my experiences as a sports coach to my ability to empathize with today’s young athletes, a definition of what they mean when they say, “it’s not fun.”

Fun means satisfying.

Fun doesn’t mean clowning around all the time or having no desire to compete like I used to think. Fun means they desire a satisfying participation experience that makes it worth the time they invest when there are a thousand other things they could be doing instead. Fun means a satisfying environment where they feel safe, valued, and among leaders who, first and foremost, want to make them better humans through athletics. 

Sure, nobody likes getting their ass handed to them in a sporting event but I don’t think winning and losing is anything but a small fraction of this new definition of fun. Then again, the environment of competing—the environment of doing things the right way and getting better every day—often depends on having that satisfying environment directed toward daily physical, mental, and emotional improvement.

As we end the fall sports season and transition to the winter sports with an eye toward spring and beyond, coaches (and parents) take a moment to honestly evaluate your program, your young student-athletes, and, in particular, get a gauge on how fun/satisfying their experience is or has been. Throw your ego aside and make the necessary changes. Study other programs. 

Develop a fun/satisfying program. Develop an environment to which young athletes choose to be there rather than doing any of those thousands of other things they could be doing. Develop an environment that respects their decision not to participate but, time and place accordingly, welcome them back into the fold without ramification if they’ve found out they made the wrong initial decision.

A coaching warning, though. Providing this type of environment takes work and effort every single day. It takes connecting with the athletes on more than just a sports performance level. It requires an energy level above and beyond the call of duty. You check your adult problems and adult ego/arrogance at the door when you walk into the locker room. You make a difference one kid, one day, one drill, one game, one play, and one season at a time through consistency and direction. Competing satisfies an inherent human trait. Tap into it with everything you do as a coach.

Provide a satisfying experience and young athletes will follow you to the ends of the earth. And it will be fun.

Finally, as so eloquently stated in Field of Dreams,

“If you build it, they will come.” 

 

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September 15, 2019 · 6:02 PM

Doesn’t Matter

It doesn’t matter what everybody else thinks.
It’s what you think that matters.

It doesn’t matter what everybody else does.
It’s what you do that matters.

It doesn’t matter what everyone else talks.
It’s the walk you walk that matters.

Be the best you that you can be.
Every day.

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August 25, 2019 · 10:38 AM

All the answers

I was probably a nightmare of a kid to coach. No, I wasn’t a behavior problem. No, I wasn’t an attendance problem. No, I wasn’t a bad influence. In short, I was not in any way, shape, or form Kelly Leak from the Bad News Bears. My problem was that I wanted to have a sense as to why we were doing the things we did.

Why did we have to stand around for 2/3 of practice instead of doing something?

Why did we do basketball shooting drills where almost all the shots we practiced were shots we would never shoot in a game?

Why didn’t we occasionally pass when we had a speed advantage and the defense stacking 9 in the box against our wishbone offense?

Why?

Why?

Why?

Of course, I never said these things to my coaches. I just thought about them. And if I couldn’t work out an answer, my interest and enthusiasm waned. I turned into a sports zombie merely going through the motions on a day to day basis.

I learned a good lesson from these experiences. Experiences that I incorporated years later from day one in my accidental coaching career. That lesson?

If you want everybody on the same page, everybody needs to know what page it is and what’s on that page.

I probably learned this from my earliest football experiences. I was fortunate to play CYO football for Don Stump, whose son was in my grade at Christ The King school. Mr. Stump worked as an administrator at the local community college at the time but had a long career teaching and coaching high school football. Dave Palcher, the assistant coach, was our line coach. Both men told us what we were doing and why we were doing it in a simple and clear manner. Mr. Palcher was especially good with us linemen. Using only an ancient, stuffed, probably about fifth hand blocking dummy, he taught us the importance of why we need to put our foot here and our helmet there and keep the feet moving each and every practice. The basics taught in those blocking and tackling drills still live in my head today. Those “why”s and “how”s still survive in my head today and were a part of every practice I coached.

The bottom line is: Players (and fellow coaches!) are more locked in when they know the basic information of why you’re doing what you are doing. Locked in players (and coaches!) buy into their roles and take more pride in their jobs.

Today, probably more than ever, kids crave answers. In sports, they want to know if the things you are asking them to do matter. No, you don’t have to justify everything you do as a coach but you do need to communicate the reasoning behind your choices. The players need to know you’re not wasting their time. Time is precious even to a teenager. 

A coach doesn’t need the perfect answer during a timeout with 1:30 left on the clock and your defense trying to protect a four-point lead against an opponent with all the momentum on their side. During that timeout, the coach must provide an answer. The players need it. They need an answer they can grab ahold of and rally behind. As I said, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be logical, presented with complete confidence, and be something besides, “TRY HARDER!!!!”

Want to be a more effective coach?

Share information.

Put everyone on the same page. And keep them there.

Respect the players in your program enough to allow them into the hive mind.

Maybe most important, know why you are doing what you do. Everything you do must have a purpose. Don’t do something just because a book, video, or that college coaching camp you went to last year told you to. Do everything with a purpose for your players and your program.

You should know and be able to communicate that purpose within the organization.

If you can’t write down a specific purpose or goal of everything you do on and off the field, either do the research to figure out why or toss it. Don’t just tell your noseguard he has A-gap. Tell your noseguard he has to get his hip into A-gap and lockout square not allowing a single, double, or triple-team block to move you out of that gap YOU OWN.

Players in your program might not be Rhodes Scholars, but they aren’t stupid. Trust them and they’ll trust you. Before they buy into what you are trying to do, they need to know what they’re buying. Knowledge is power—and powerful.

Never forget, if you want everybody on the same page, everybody needs to know what page it is and what’s on that page.

 

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August 17, 2019 · 2:22 PM

An Oft Forgotten Aspect of Coaching

Yesterday I met with a football coach friend to show him a defensive line drill progression for the three-man sled from back in the day. The Quick Draw/Lockout Drill is a good drill that covers defensive line fundamentals from the ground up in 7-10 minutes of practice time. That’s a good thing because, as you’ve heard me rant about before, time is the currency of coaching. Time is valuable and shouldn’t be wasted with frivolity—unless that frivolity has a purpose, like a fun competition.

After I finished showing the coach the drill and talked about some other aspects of coaching the defensive line, I checked the list I had in my jean pocket. Surprisingly, I covered everything on my list. Even at 55 years of age and ten seasons out of football, I still had it.

Or so I thought.

An hour or so later back at home, I retrieved the list from my jeans pocket before throwing them in the dirty clothes basket. I sat down on the bed and read the list while my ego soared with my second old man memory victory of the day. (You people know, right? That situation where you get “notified” that the stuff you forget to take out of your pockets ended up lining the inside of the washing machine with annoying shreds of wet paper.) I folded the list with a satisfied smile and was placing it on the table when it hit me. In my coaching session, I forgot the single most important aspect of coaching sports drills.

Paying attention.

Specifically, paying attention to the form of each and every kid on each and every drill. Good stances, ball reaction, hand positioning, foot placement, arm lockout, hip into their gap, etc. My balloon of coaching pride burst. I had taught the basic steps of the drill to my friend but failed to include the most important piece of information to ensure success. Paying attention.

Paying attention and correcting is at the very heart of coaching a sport. Why do we practice and do drills? To get better, right? If I’m not paying attention to each and every kid on each and every rep with the sole mission to make that kid just a little bit better, then I’ve failed as a coach. Sure, I still have the title and the team shirt and my name in the game program, but if I’m not making my players better every single day with every single repetition, I am not coaching.

And if I’m not coaching a drill with the intent and purpose to get better…

I AM WASTING TIME!!!

Youth and high school sports are played by youth and teenagers. Youth and teenagers, as a general rule, do a pretty crappy job of squeezing the best out of every practice repetition. Given the opportunity, they will slack off. I was like that as a kid and I bet most of you were/are the same. Very few have the innate discipline to perform ten repetitions of a drill with the focus of improvement on each rep. That’s why they need coaches. To teach, push, and correct technique and skill. It’s the very heart and soul of what we do. 

And what did I say about time in the opening paragraph? Time is valuable. Practice time, preparation time, and game time are all fleeting and can’t be wasted. They are too valuable to waste talking to other coaches, worrying about the next thing on the to-do list, or just mentally relaxing while the players go through the motions.

I publicly apologize to my coaching friend. I let him down by leaving out the most important aspect of the drill, “Watch every defensive lineman like a hawk with every snap of the drill.”

Coaching is teaching.

Coaching is providing the environment for constant improvement.

Purpose. Pride. Passion. Performance.

Push them to get better one step at a time.

Every player gets better.

Every day.

By Snyder, Frank R. Flickr: Miami U. Libraries – Digital Collections [No restrictions or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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January 27, 2019 · 7:01 PM

Purposeful Planning

(I’m ready for some sports ranting! It’s been a while. Here is the first of what may be many coaching rants on the concepts of program building using one of my favorite concepts, The Four P’s: Purpose, Pride, Passion & Performance, as a starting point.)

The bowl season is over. The Chiefs are out of the playoffs. MLB pitchers and catchers report in a few weeks. Time to relax, right?

Wrong.

If you’re a football or baseball coach or an ex-coach who still has football/baseball coaching blood flowing through your veins, it’s time to work. It’s time to get serious about a plan.

For the high school/youth baseball coach, you probably already have a good idea about who your kids are, what skills they have, and what they need to improve upon. Your goal is to develop a preseason plan that works all the fundamentals of baseball while infusing those skills with your philosophy or style of play. If you’re new to your program and unsure about what level your kids are, you still need the same plan. The difference is you won’t have the background data to customize your preseason plan as the returning coach does.

For a high school football coach, it’s time to get out those self-analysis notes you wrote down after your season ended last fall out for both you, your coaches, and your team. Review them honestly. Review them with purpose. Go back and watch each aspect of your team’s performance from the previous year. Be honest with yourself and remember this is not the time to sugarcoat anything. Burying problems doesn’t make you successful. Fixing the problems does.

What worked? What didn’t?

Who worked? Who didn’t?  

What can we do better?

What can each coach and player do better?

Now make a fundamental goal for the team. My football/strength & conditioning coaching fundamental goal was simple. Develop aggressive, athletic players who hit like a cannon shot. This meant making each of our kids a little faster, a little stronger, and a little quicker. With this in mind, EVERY single thing we did, every minute we did it, on every day we met absolutely had to be with the purpose of becoming a little more aggressive, a little more athletic, and a little more able to hit the opponent like a cannon shot every day.

The secret is in the PLAN!

For both the high school baseball and football coach, these next few months are vital to success. You need to have a purpose. You need to be able to sell that purpose to your kids every day. You need to have every coach in your program either on board with that purpose or on the job board looking for another job. These next few months are crucial to how well you compete. Take advantage of this time. It’s what separates success from failure.

  • Make the plan. I always say that you can’t deviate from a plan if you don’t have one to start with. Always be ready to move forward.
  • Make it detailed. Cover all the bases of what you want to accomplish.
  • Make it active, not passive. No wasted time, no standing around. Respect your players time as much as you respect them.
  • Generate excitement through your purpose. Kids and coaches will follow you if you convince them this is exactly where we want to go.

Good luck! Dream big and go do it!

Hard work is the magic.

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September 22, 2018 · 7:18 PM

Quality is Job 1

Remember that advertisement by one of the major car manufacturing companies? It was an effective ad campaign for a corporation but plays an even more important role in coaching. In fact, it’s probably written at the top of page one of the Coaching Manual.

Quality.

It has to be at the forefront of everything you do as a program. Whether you’re talking football, baseball, basketball, softball, volleyball, etc. One of the major roles of a coach is to make sure things in the program are set up right, prepared right, and performed right.

As they say, the devil’s in the details. It’s up to the coach to make sure those details are done and done right. Who else is going to do it?

Since it’s football season and I’m an old line coach, I’ll go there. On the offensive and defensive line every detail counts. The footwork, the hip position, the hand position, are as important as the assignment and the alignment. The attention to these details from day one, workout one, practice one, game one to the end of the season is often the defining factor between a successful and a struggling program.

The quality of your position group should be a source of pride for any position coach in football. Win the game or lose the game, the position coach should walk off the field feeling he did the best he could preparing his players to play. That same coach should also make a promise to those same players to study the film and do the work necessary to improve. That’s what I mean by quality control.

When I left football coaching almost ten years ago, I thought the digital revolution would drastically lead to an improvement in the quality control department. And then when software, like HUDL, entered the scene, I have to admit I was a little jealous of the possibilities at the hands of the high school football coaches.

A funny thing has happened though, the exponential improvement in digital tools has not resulted in a parallel improvement in quality control. Technology is a tool. A tool is something you use to make things better. Each rep of each play of the game film should be viewed through a quality control lens. Every position on every play should be evaluated on the execution of the details. The details of why one play worked and why another failed. Break it down, plan the improvements, and then go out and teach them. That again. is what I mean by quality control.

Coaches, Quality is Job 1.

Your job is quality.

Don’t forget this.

Quality control. Every day, every play.

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