Posted by Kevin

For those of you that were not aware, I’m coaching a five and six year old baseball team at Ooltewah Youth Association this year. We are the 5 & 6 Cubs.

I noticed before the season started how intense some of the other coaches were - almost too intense for this young age. At this age, we should be more concerned about teaching the game and having fun than winning. In fact, most of the players don’t even know whether we win or lose when the games are over. Nonetheless, I promised myself I would not be one of those coaches that went overboard when it came to winning.

So last night I found myself at that point. We were playing the Red Sox, and after scoring 3 runs in the top of the first, we absolutely gave them 4 of their 5 first inning runs. Both of our mental errors were ‘tagging the base instead of the runner.’ All of the coaches and players were yelling, “Tag him, tag him, tag him!” And both times my players ran as hard as they could to the base, never touching the runner. There were no runners behind them, so a force out was not an option. The runners had to be tagged in order to get the out.

I use those examples not to embarass the players involved, but to make my point that learning the game is much more important than winning.

It’s easy to criticize a five or six year old when they do something wrong, but the right thing to do is to explain what they should have done and why, and to encourage them to do it right the next time. Next year when they’re playing with some other coach and some other team, they won’t remember who won the game on May 19, 2008, but I guarantee you when they get the ball and there’s no runner on first, they’ll be thinking to themselves, “Ok, I’ve got to tag the runner, not the base.”

Coaching this team has taught me many lessons about life and myself. I’ll be posting more of them with some photos soon!