Hey guys, so this last weekend I got the opportunity to coach our 13U team for the first time out on the field and I got to observe a lot. I learned a lot about our team I learned a lot about coaches from the other teams and you know one thing that I thought about on the way home was the kind of culture that we want to build as coaches. What kind of players do we want to develop?

Of course we want to develop good baseball ballplayers we want to develop kids that can hit well, throw strikes, make good plays, you know played the game hard, but we also want to develop good young men, good young women that that are good teammates. Alright, that don't hang their head. I can't tell you how many kids I saw sulking, throwing their helmet, throwing their equipment, cursing, arguing with the umpire and you know I think it's our job as coaches to hold those players accountable.

We want to teach our players to pick one another up. Right, remember you're going to strike out, you're going to make errors, you're going to walk guys, you're going to look silly at times baseball and softball are games of failure, so we want to make sure as coaches we hold our players accountable.  I don't care if it's the best player on our team our #4 hitter if he throws his helmet well he's going to set the next inning, if there's a player that argues with the umpire he's going to sit the next inning, if there's a kid that jogs out onto the field and doesn't hustle he's going to sit the next inning, because this early in the season if you start to let things slide, an you’re like oh well I would pull him out of the game but he's our best picture well now everybody else on the team is going to think it's OK.

We have to make sure we hold him accountable. We don't have to yell; we don't have to scream but we have to make sure we sit them the next inning, we sit down we talk to him and we stop that activity or that attitude early on because again the weekends are going to start to fly by you’re going to look back and say man that was a fast season. Well we have to do our job and make a good impact as coaches to teach them the life lessons that this game has to offer about being a good teammate, about what it means to deal with adversity, what it means to battle when things are going bad because it's really easy to be a good teammate when things are going good. If you guys are winning, if you guys are scoring a lot of runs, if your pitchers thrown a no hitter, well of course everybody's excited, the whole dugout cheering for each other, everybody's up having a good time but when things go bad and you're down a couple runs early, your shortstop makes a couple errors, your catcher let's a couple balls go through, and your pictures walking guys well that's a true test as to what kind of a teammate that player might be.

So again, hold your players accountable teach them the life lessons that this game has to offer and make sure you sit them down you explain it to him and you teach them, because a lot of these kids you don't know what they're being told at home you don't know what their mom or dad are telling them in the car on the way home so we have to do our job as coaches to mentor them, to teach them to guide them to be good teammates, to be coachable, to respect the umpire, the other team, and really respect the game. So again, as you get ready for this weekend coming up, keep your players accountable, teach them all the great lessons that this game has to offer and good luck!

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