It Could Be Worse... A LOT Worse

In the summer of 2010 I was coaching an 11U team of Athens Sandlot All-Stars, and I remember one very valuable moment in our season. We were playing in our home tournament, the Throw-Down In A-Town, and we were having a little bit of a rough time in pool play. Several of our players were having bad games and they were starting to get discouraged internally and were expressing that discouragement outwardly. Kids who normally would never slam a glove or helmet or forcefully place a bat back in the rack were doing so with regularity, and they were openly verbalizing their disdain for the umpires and their own failures. Unfortunately, our coaches were all experiencing the same frustration and, needless to say, were not handling it much better than the 11 year-old kids.

I remember being at a loss for how to handle it. I knew something had to be done before things got out of control. I had an idea from something I remembered hearing Skip Bertman talk about with his LSU Tigers team. So, when I got home on Saturday night I sat down at my computer to do some research. I looked up a number of news articles that told of various tragedies that had befallen some people. There was an article about a young girl who was recently diagnosed with cancer, another article about a family that was in a fatal car accident, and another article about a young boy who was confined to a wheelchair, and he discussed how much he loved baseball yet had never been able to play on a team until a league in WV was developed for individuals with disabilities.

I printed all of those articles out and glued them to a big piece of poster-board. At the top of the poster board, in bold black Sharpie® marker I wrote: "DID YOU JUST STRIKE OUT? POP OUT? MAKE AN ERROR? OR A BAD PITCH? IT COULD BE WORSE... A LOT WORSE."

Underneath those words were the various articles I had pasted to the poster-board. I got to the field extra early that next morning and taped that big poster-board to the far side of the dugout, above the bench. When all the players and coaches had arrived, I pulled them together before warmup and explained to them that I had been up late the night before, trying to come up with a way to help us all to come into this new day with a better perspective on what we were doing... playing a game!

Then I showed them the poster-board that was hanging in our dugout. I said (something like this), "Today we will all have a new rule. Any time and every time something happens during the game that causes us to get angry, frustrated, discouraged, or any other negative emotion... we will be required to walk down to the end of the dugout, read the poster-board, choose one of the articles, and read it for 20 seconds. After reading, take a deep breath, put on a smile (force one if you have to), then go ahead to the field or to your next task."

This exercise was for our coaches as well, and we all needed it just as much as the kids did (coaches sometimes need it more than the kids do). I could also include all parents in that; perhaps we should post one of those boards on the outside of the dugout as well.

The point is, it was such a crucial thing to be able to (even if forced to) pause for a moment (in the heat of the moment) and be reminded of how blessed we are to be able to be out there on a beautiful afternoon, enjoying a game, when things could be worse... even A LOT worse.

For me, it was my first step at beginning to learn how valuable the "mental game" is. Today, it is roughly 75% of what I focus on as a coach. We sometimes joke about how coaches these days need to not only be adept at teaching the skills of the game, but also have some counseling training as well. That's no joke. So much of the game is mental – dealing with failure, disappointment, doubt, anger, frustration and fear. When we incorporate into our coaching how to deal with all of those emotions and how to effectively pause and change our natural, negative mental reactions to the circumstances of the game to more productive, positive reactions... then we are taking huge steps in helping our kids be more successful.

And... what's MOST important here is that we are instilling in them tools for success in not just this game, but in life. How many times in life will we all experience a circumstance that angers us, frustrates us, or makes us feel sorry for ourselves? Often, right. Helping kids learn how to deal with those kinds of things at a young age in a game they are playing will actually extend way beyond the game. You're coaching the BIG picture. Not just for that day; not just for that season; not just for that trophy.

By the way, from what I can remember about that team in 2010, we played with much better focus that Saturday and the remainder of that tournament, and made it to the championship bracket and eventually lost to a 12U team. But I have to wonder if maybe some of those "perspective skills" that we began to build back then helped them as they made their way through high school, and even now as they are entering into adulthood.

I can say with assurance that it has helped me.