Let's Start Something New: PDP
PDP = "Player Development Program"
I would like to make a proposal for a new league. A new youth baseball and softball program that is long overdue and could have potential to do SO much good, especially in a world of travel ball craziness that seems to be spinning more and more out of control each year.
Let me be clear. I am not talking about adding something else to the current league you already play in, or adding this PDP idea to your travel ball plans. I am talking about blowing the whole thing up and starting over. I am challenging local leagues to take a look at these principles I am about to share and consider a complete and total restructuring. I am challenging travel programs from age 15 and under to save hundreds of dollars in tournament fees and hotels and invest in something that will be much more worthwhile in the long run.
The greatest investment a family can make in their child's athletic dreams is PLAYER DEVELOPMENT.
The greatest investment a coach can make in his or her team is PLAYER DEVELOPMENT.
The greatest investment a league or travel organization can make in their program is PLAYER DEVELOPMENT.
One of the most noticeably lacking things in today's leagues and travel teams is player development (I might also add, COACH development). Somewhere along the way, we decided that it was better to have fewer practices and more games. Most experts in childhood development and sports psychology agree that kids between the ages of 6 and 12 years-old should attend 3 to 4 practices for each game they play. Even at older ages (13-18 years-old) there should be at least a 1:1 ratio of games and practice.
I don't know very many leagues or organizations where either of those numbers are happening. In most youth leagues, the ratio is 2 practices to 3 games or more per week and in some cases it is just one practice per week. In fact, if you were to make the ratio work according to the number of games that are played by the typical 12U baseball team in a week, this is what it would look like:
1 Mid-week game
3 Pool games at weekend tournament
1 (minimum) bracket game at weekend tournament
= 5 games
That would mean the team would need to have at least 10 practices during the week if they are truly interested in player development. Of course, that's unrealistic. There is not enough time.
But isn't game experience better than practice? After all, game reps are much different than practice reps. The speed and pressure of the game is much different. After all, games are what we are preparing for, so why not play more games?
Well, let's think about this for a second. In a 1 hour 30 minute long game, a 12 year-old might get 4-6 swings of the bat, and depending on what position he or she plays, maybe 3-6 ground balls or fly balls. That doesn't sound like very much development to me.
In a well-organized practice, every player can get 3-4 times as many quality swings and more than 10 times as many ground balls and fly balls! However, at the most critical ages of development, where kids need as many touches and attempts as possible, we are choosing to play competitive games that give them very little instead of more practice, where they can develop greater skill and greater confidence.
Travel Ball
Travel baseball really began to grow about 20 years ago and seems to just keep exploding (I am not sure about when travel softball began, but I suspect it was even sooner due to the fact that many local recreation leagues do not have strong softball programs as they do baseball). More and more teams pop up year after year (many of which with the word "Elite" somewhere in their team name, but that's a whole other topic). More travel teams mean more travel tournaments, more travel games. And of course, all of that means less practice. In the travel team’s defense, it is a lot to ask of a 12 year old and their family to practice 2-3 times a week and then play a weekend tournament schedule that can be 4 or more games in 2 days.
The heart of the problem, it seems, is that the main focus is games, winning tournaments, and comparing one kid's ability to other kids' abilities (and this becomes more potent at the older ages). If I am being completely honest, I want to tell you that the need to play on these teams in order to get opportunities down the road is simply not true at such a young age.
Now, after reading the previous paragraph, recreational league directors and proponents of "local" ball over travel ball are probably saying, "That's right! Travel ball is the problem! You tell 'em, Stewart!"
Not so fast.
Rec Leagues
Unfortunately, many recreational leagues have fallen into the same pattern as travel ball, the only differences being that it is not as expensive, the talent pool is limited, and games are played in a fairly local geographic region. Still, most recreational schedules begin with each team having 2-3 practices a week up until the season starts. Once the game season begins, each team is lucky to get 1 or 2 practices in during the week, and are most likely playing 2 to 3 games per week.
The issue is the same: there is more emphasis on playing games than on player development.
PDP
When I speak of "player development," what exactly do I mean? It's more than just one thing. Player development involves building skills, increasing overall athleticism, building instinct, mental toughness, and deliberately practicing in a manner that prepares the player for the next level at which he or she will be seeking to compete.
Player development is run by coaches and leaders who are committed to personal development as well as being committed to growing in their understanding of the game and how to communicate its complexities to kids in simple ways.
Player development values practice, instruction, and training more than game-playing. Player development recognizes that while a big reason why kids choose to play on baseball or softball teams is because of the games, but it is not the "primary" reason. The game is the destination. Development is the journey to that destination. Without development, there is no destination. A PDP (Player Development Program) is designed to help kids fall in love with the journey!
Player development emphasizes instruction and building the fundamental skills that are needed to play at a high level. Player development emphasizes the things that must be valued for kids to be as athletic as they can possibly be, such as good nutrition, strength training, and conditioning. These are included as normal parts of the everyday development program, just like fundamentals and skills practice. To not emphasize them is to allow an assumption that they are not as important as other things such as fielding ground balls or taking batting practice.
Likewise, player development recognizes that a HUGE component of any player's ability to compete is their mentality and mindset. Not only do we throw kids into games ill-prepared to play games, but in doing so we expect them to have the mental strength and the tools to deal with the immense failures and stressors that come at them while playing the game, or while sitting on the bench. Even in our limited practices, we rarely plan in time for training our minds and developing a system or routines for how we will mentally handle those adversities during the game. This is a HUGE part of player development.
Finally, player development sees value in kids learning things about the game through unstructured free play. This is something that I went into greater depth about in a previous post, titled Playing Without Uniforms. I know that might seem like a bit of a paradox, but it isn't. I've mentioned before that I feel like today's kids are "over-coached" (I wrote an entire post about it here). But in a nutshell, they have not learned how to think for themselves when it comes to the strategic portions of the game. While on the field, they are told exactly what to do at every turn and on every pitch. While they are in the batter's box, they are getting 4 or 5 different pieces of advice. Every pitch is being called for the pitchers and catchers. In games, they have no time to think and react and be athletes! They spend more time in games just being a robot... doing what coach tells me.
That's not the same as development, as I am describing it above. Coaches NEED to coach. But in today's game, coaching has been misinterpreted to think that it is mainly done in games. Coaches, your time to shine is in PRACTICE! Coaches, fall in love with practice. When you do, your energy level will increase during practice, making practice more challenging but more enjoyable for the kids. When they are forced to practice hard and when they actually learn something in practice and make noticeable gains in certain skill areas, it will show up in games. Games will be easier for them to play. Games will be more fun for them to play.
A big part of their development "in practice" is having opportunities to play the game (in a scrimmage style setting) without any coaching from the adults. This is a great evaluation tool for you, coach. You can sit back and take notes on all of the areas in which they lack confidence. Through "pickup style" play, you can easily see things that you will need to work on to help them become more instinctive and successful on game days. And, most importantly, this is fun. The kids will enjoy it, and you might even learn a valuable lesson when you see how much they enjoy playing the game without coaches and parents constantly chirping at them about something.
So... what would such a "league" look like? If, right now and today, I had the resources, the support, the people and the facilities, what would a Player Development Program look like? I'll try to paint you a picture:
GETTING STARTED
Kids (families) would sign up for this program in the same way they might sign up for any other league or team. There would have to be some level of cost involved, of course, because there would still be the normal expenses of uniforms, umpires, equipment, etc.
COACHING
Anyone who wishes to coach in the Player Development Program must be trained in the basic fundamentals of the game, and in addition must be committed to personal development and willing to emphasize the principles of player development as I described above. Much emphasis would be placed on quality coaching, which means there would likely be fewer actual hands-on coaches in the program. Which also means there would need to be a heavy emphasis on the value of volunteers and parent involvement in their kids' development. Much more could be said about this, but I will save it for another post.
BASIC STRUCTURE
Prioritizing player development will look differently based on age group. For example, the younger you are, the more instruction you are receiving and the less games you are playing. "Travel ball" as we know it, with its big, expensive tournaments, will be reserved for ages that college coaches are actually interested in seeing play (mostly 16U and older). Everyone else will stay fairly close to home, save money, and focus on developing great skills and athleticism for those years coming up when they are really going to want to get noticed (if that is their goal). Even if that's not their goal, the Player Development Program will still be a lot of fun and thus a desirable choice for kids, I guarantee it.
SCHEDULE
August
Before coaches begin hands-on coaching with kids, they are trained to make sure everyone is on the same page. This can occur in the off-season. In order to plan for this, you might have to have an initial sign-up for the PDP in the late summer. August is typically when most travel organizations have tryouts and begin compiling their team rosters. So, late July or August wouldn't be an unusual time for families to plan their following year of baseball and softball experience. This gives the PDP leadership plenty of time to secure coaches and train coaches, and it gives families time to pay for the PDP, however much it is determined to cost.
September-October
Run a loosely organized fall program in which players who are available to show up can come together for a couple hours once or twice a week. The first hour would be instruction with a particular skill and drills to support it. The second hour would be a pickup game, with no coaches. New teams would be selected each day and kids would be grouped according to age and skill level (for safety purposes).
November-February
Opportunities for strength training and conditioning would be offered, in addition to nutrition counseling, plans and accountability programs. All voluntary, but available to anyone who is part of the PDP.
Additionally, for the older ages of players, there would be training and assistance in the recruiting process offered, if playing college ball is their goal. This would include creating video, help with writing emails, researching colleges, NCAA eligibility and compliance, and everything else that is involved in the recruiting process.
March-May
Older kids who are playing school ball would be focused on school ball. For the younger ages, this is the heart of the development season. Teams would be created based on age and skill level. As weather permits, practices would be held 3 to 4 times a week. Once the practice schedule is determined, it would remain the same throughout the duration of the games season, except when games overlap. For example, if your team begins the season by having practice on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday but then when the game season starts you now have games on Saturday, your team would still practice Monday–Thursday but not on Saturday.
Younger age groups would play less tournaments (maybe one or two) and more scheduled games versus quality opponents. Playing scheduled games (on Friday, Saturday, Sunday) allows for greater control of scheduling and the ability to maintain the development priority of weekly practice days.
June-July
Older age groups begin their PDP in-season schedule, in which they would practice 3 times a week and play games on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Even among the older age groups, I could see a trend of getting away from so many expensive tournaments and instead, make a conscious effort to move toward more scheduled games versus quality opponents. For example, invite three teams to join you for a weekend in which every team would play four games between Friday and Sunday. Perhaps the structure of those games would be as such:
match up the four teams
play a 3-game series vs the same team (the one you're matched up with); these games would be on Friday and Saturday (one Fri and two Sat)
on Sunday, the series winners play each other and the series losers play each other
Something else you would include in these weekend games is time for on-field batting practice each day and on-field pre-game in/out before each game. This is something that is RARELY EVER permitted in the travel ball structure of tournaments.
The older age-group teams would plan to enter into one or two big tournaments, just for the experience and the chance to connect with college coaches. But the fact is, I believe if the PDP is run with high class and high quality, and the "invitational" model of weekend games include high quality teams of the same philosophy, I believe college coaches would be interested in taking a look. If you have quality teams with good players, college coaches will come see them.
In fact, I will go as far as to say that I highly doubt college coaches gain much from watching players compete against inferior talent. The travel ball circuit has exploded so much in recent years, which has caused the talent to become watered down and so spread out. I am not a college coach, but I imagine it is becoming more challenging to wade through the travel ball tournaments and actually find good talent competing against good talent on a regular basis.
PDP would make it a priority to have high quality talent in the same location all weekend long.
What are some of the other benefits to structuring this kind of program with this kind of game play rather than the "cattle herding style" travel tournaments? Travel ball parents, imagine a world like this...
All game times would be scheduled, which means there would be no waiting around to find out when bracket play begins.
No early morning games. I am yet to find a player, coach, umpire, or parent who is at their best at 8:00am!
No required hotel stays – a travel tournament racket!
Having a Friday–Sunday game schedule means less time off of work for parents, less nights in a hotel, less eating out for meals (not to mention often unhealthy meals), and less overall expenses for families.
For the older age players, it would actually give them a pretty good feel for what a college baseball/softball weekend series looks like. Arriving at the ballpark, taking BP, infield/outfield, then playing a double-header can turn a typical day into a 6-to-7-hour experience on the ball diamond. Doing this three days in a row in the format as explained above gives kids an experience that high school players rarely get, yet college players are expected to handle well. This format could actually better prepare them for the college experience more than anything else they have done.
Players would develop more in this format, I believe. For example, they would have to learn to make certain adjustments throughout the weekend due to playing the same team multiple times. Meaning, if a player can’t handle a breaking pitch in game one, guess what they will see the next 10 at-bats for the weekend! In the tournament format you rarely face the same team all summer, let alone the same weekend, so this kind of strategic development is lost.
Coaches know exactly how many games and innings will be played going into the weekend and can thus plan accordingly. This makes it easy to keep arm care a priority and stick with your plan for such. When lineup decisions are not based on "win or go home" bracket play, then true care and concern for development can be the focus, and giving all kids ample opportunity to compete in game settings, as well as ample rest and recovery.
I could continue writing this blog post, as the more I type the more ideas and thoughts I come up with to further develop this vision. But I think I have shared enough to give you an idea for what COULD be.
What I want to know is, who is with me? Who is ready to take a chance on something like this? Are there any ambitious dads and moms out there who are willing to be pioneers for a better way? I happen to believe this is a better way. But we can dream of it and talk about it all we want and it won't matter a bit until someone says, "This is what we're doing, and here are the resources for it."
I realize it would take a lot of moving and shaking to make this a reality. But perhaps there are one or two people out there who have the resources to help a PDP get started, and you have happened to read this post and it has ignited something in you. I want to say to you, I believe this would grow. I believe with all my heart that this is what is needed in our world of youth baseball (and perhaps also softball, but I am not as familiar with the softball world so as to speak as boldly about it as I do baseball). But I can see this working really, really well and accomplishing so much more good – in the game, in communities, in families.
If you believe it too, let's talk.