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Crossroads
by Dave
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
The team has come to a crossroads. In order for things to progress and continue, something has to change. When we started out in rec all-stars or early travel, at the age of 8, 9, 10, even 11 for some, it was good enough to have the kids coached by a few parents. Heck, those parents knew much more about the lay of the land in club travel fastpitch softball than the rest of us. They all had prior experience with older daughters and knew the game much more than we did. We deferred to their decision making authority because we really did not know any better. But as time has worn on, some major definiciencies have reared their ugly heads and it is time to do something about this before the team completely splits up.
There are many team coaching/management arrangements out there. But without getting into all of them, the team which started out in 10U ball with a few parents coaching is the single most common one. As these teams progress, sometimes questions arise. Maybe certain hard and fast rules are ignored because one guy or gal makes the decisions for the team and his or her own parental responsibilities conflict with the team's well being.
For example, I can think of an instance in which a team I was involved with had several pitchers who had about the same level of effectiveness. Sometimes one particular father would shove his daughter to the head of the pack, probably believing she was the best on the team. He might use a different set of rules for his daughter than he would for another pitcher. At one point, the four team coaches got together and developed a "best practices" approach with respect to pitching-change decisions on elimination days. They developed a rule which stated that a pitcher will be removed from an elimination game when she has yielded 3 runs unless the team is still ahead by 5 runs or unless there are other strong extenuating circumstances. Then during the first game played after the establishment of the rule, the starting pitcher yielded 2 runs before recording an out in the first inning. One coach turned to the father of the girl, a coach, and said, one more and we have to pull her. The father turned and said, "Both those runs were scored on errors. They weren't her fault. We could have had Jennie Finch pitching and they still would have scored." His thinking was something like, "I'm not letting you pull my daughter in this circumstance." He wasn't willing to blindly apply the rule he had helped develop. The rule didn't apply to his daughter.
The truth was those plays may have been errors or they may not have been. One ball got past the third baseman but it was hit 98 miles per hour and rolled to the fence because the left fielder couldn't even get to it before it got past her. Another ball nearly killed the SS. And the final straw, the play on which the runners scored, was indeed an error, one made by the pitcher herself as she suffered from the shell-shock of being hit so hard. These were not the extenuating circumstances everyone had contemplated. The rule should have applied but it didn't. The team went on to lose 5-4 when the pitcher yielded 3 additional runs and was never pulled.
After the game, a few parents mumbled amongst themseleves but not to that coach, "I thought pitchers would be pulled after 3 runs?" The father-coach was never the wiser, thought "oh well, we lost one, too bad," and believed nobody was particularly angry with him. Think again!
When things like this happen, often what occurs is the other pitchers leave for other teams in order to become aces or at least get more time in the circle. They don't want to play second fiddle for their entire lives to the daughter of the head coach or the one who pushes hardest. They can live with losing but they want to live in a world in which decisions like this one are more objective, more predictable. There's nothing quite like recognizing the existence of two classes of people when one realizes one is in the lower class.
Sometimes the coaches don't have daughters who pitch. But they do play other key positions, sometimes with the result of reduced playing time of a kid with better skills. These circumstances are often not egregious ones but they do raise the hackles on the back of the necks of other parents, whether their kid is directly effected or not. Any error made by the coach's kid while yours is riding the pine creates double the pain. A second error causes the parent of the bench warmer to offer, "If that were my kid out there making those errors, I'd want the coaches to pull her out. But that kid will stay in regardless of how many errors she makes, even if it costs us the game!"
There are some coaches out there who never yell. I do not believe they are in the majority. Assuming you are on a team with a coach who yells, the question is, at whom does he or she yell and under what circumstances? I have been involved with teams on which only the top 3 or 4 girls on the team ever get yelled at. I have been involved with teams on which only the coaches' kids really get yelled at. I have also been involved with teams on which only the kid who competes with one coach's daughter for playing time at a particular position ever gets yelled at - the idea being to establish in others' minds the point that this particular kid isn't quite that good and my daughter should probably play more time at the position. There are many different variations of this but whenever a parent coach yells at some kid, questions are almost always raised.
This can really be a problem at practices. Walk up to any field and notice who is disturbing the flow of things. That is almost invariably a coach's kid. Fathers and/or mothers would yell at these kids but they recognize that they will not achieve the desired results - their kid won't listen to them. That creates stress. Then when some other kid, taking the lead from the coach's daughter, begins to cause trouble, she usually gets it twice over to make up for the parent's inability to yell at his or her own kid.
Another phenomenon we see with parents coaching teams is the parents who are not coaches want to make contributions too. They'll make sure their kid doesn't disobey the coaches ... even ... if ... that ... means ... coming into the dugout in the middle of games to set her straight. These parents really do appreciate that the coach can't be expected to always straighten out their kid. That applies equally to behavioral issues and softball technical ones. Maybe Bob doesn't see than my Sharon is out of position in right. She's oblivious to everything, don't know what I'm gonna do with that kid, "HEY SHARON MOVE WHAT ARE YOU DOING, MOVE OVER TOWARDS CENTER." So, instead of four designated parents coaching the team, what we have is 24 coaches, depending on who shows up at each game or practice. Once this dynamic starts, it is impossible to stop!
I have seen situations in which pitchers' or other players' parents who coach have put their kids ahead of others regardless of one of those kids being head and shoulders above the coach's daughter. Sometimes I have seen the reverse occur.
I can think of at least one situation in which a pitcher's parent made sure to keep her out of games against the very best competition because the parent was afraid the kid might fail. Some people put growth in confidence well ahead of learning to compete. They want their daughter to pitch perfect games against nobody in particular rather than to learn to compete with the best and face losing 3-2.
The precise reasons for discontent in parental coaching situations don't so much matter. The bottom line is, if a parent is making team decisions, if a parent makes all disciplinary decisions, it is sort of expected that he or she may sometimes make wrong ones attributable to the parental relationship with one member of the team. Everybody makes mistakes of one kind or another but the issue under these circumstances is the other parents and the kids themselves are likely to see this problem as a continuing one, not likely to disappear over time and via gained experience, and then lose faith in the team structure. This becomes more and more apparent as girls get older. I would guess that these situations can evolve as early 12U ball, are more evident at 14U, and become absolutely intolerable by 16U.
Whatever the age, whatever the circumstance, the question is, what do we do about it? Well, the "12 families" got together, discussed the issue (aired the grievances), and hopefully agreed to stay together. Before we moved on, it was necessary to create a group decision-making process. We decided that, if all the girls agreed to stick together through thick and thin, all decisions would be made by a minimu vote of 8-4. It was a constitutional moment. We had to agree to agree or we would be mired in bureaucratic hand-ringing. Let's leave that to government.
After we established a decision making format, the first issue on the table was the little thing about parental team issues. That's what brought us to the table. How do we resolve this?
One proposal was to find someone outside the 12 sets of parents and bring them in as a volunteer coach. That's a nice idea but the truth is, it is extremely difficult to find someone willing to undergo the rigors of coaching a travel club as a volunteer. Some organizations can do that but nobody at this table can think of a single individual suitable for the role who would be willilng to do the job. So that one was tossed. The best idea and one on which the vote was 12-0, was to hire a coach from outside the org and have her (preferably a female - 11-1 vote) train the girls and make the important decisions. And that's where we left things.
So, now the question is, what does one pay to a "professional" travel team coach and what is expected of her? That's at the heart of this writing.
Before we begin to look for the qualities of the coach, the first item which came up for discussion is what will it cost us, what will we pay her. Personally, I've heard figures tossed around between $2,500 and $5,000. With 12 kids, the bottom line nut would be anywhere between $200 and as high as $500 once certain incidentals are factored in. That's quite a range. How do we evaluate it?
The only way I can think of evaluating what to set as an expected range for the hired coach's salary is to list out the time we will need her based on our annual calendar. Here's about what that looks like:
1) The year begins with tryouts in August. But in this case, we have an intact team and will not be conducting tryouts.
2) The team plays fall ball in September-November. These games usually are played in some league in which double headers (total 3 hours each) are played on Sundays over 8 weeks = 24 hours. The team generally might practice a few times during the fall for an hour and a half each time - let's say that totals to 9 hours. They also play a couple two day tournaments with each day taking up approximately 7 hours of everyone's time = 28 hours. Most of November, the team will take off. So that totals to about 61 hours. But, to be reasonable, the coach doesn't need to be there every double header. We're playing these just to keep our feet wet. If she can be there for the practices and the two tournaments, that cuts it down to 37 hours.
3) We won't get going hot and heavy in December. Perhaps the team will do some clinics and get together for a couple two hour sessions during the entire month. That's just about maybe 4 total hours.
4) In January and February, things really get going with 9 weeks of 2 practices each lasting say 2 hours. The coach must be there for these. The total number of hours should be about 36.
5) During the March to May time period, these girls will be playing with their school teams, some of which prohibit any activity (especially travel ball) during their seasons. We can conduct a few practices without the prohibited girls but there isn't much sense to holding many sessions with a partial team. Let's call that 16 hours of practice. Lest I forget, we're probably going to enter a couple (maybe 3) one-day tourneys/round-robins on Sundays late in the season. Varsity players will be excused from attending but anybody below that level will be expected to come. So will the coach and that adds another 21 hours to her schedule. This brings the total time commitment to about 37 hours over these three months.
6) Things get hot and heavy in June and July. We'll play 5 2-day tournaments, one 4-6 day event, probably at some nationals, and the girls will be expected to practice twice per week for two hours each session. Of course, the last two weeks of July will be the final big tournament so let's figure 6 weeks worth of practice. The total time commitment for the coach looks like 70 (5 X 2-days at 7 hours per day for regular tourneys) + call it 30 for the big one + 24 hours of practice, for a total of 124 hours.
If my practice schedule looks light to you, consider that I build in assumptions including personal participation at strength/agility training and perhaps technical lessons and clinics for all girls. The hired coach need not attend these and, in fact, is probably not welcome.
So the total time commitment for our hired coach stands at 238 hours with some whiggle room should we need to adjust it downwards. For instance, we could cut out the entire fall season. That would cut it down 37 hours to a total of about 200.
In any event, if we divide the expected salary range of $2,500 to $5,000, we are left with somewhere between $12.50 and $25.00 per hour excluding certain incidental costs such as hotel rooms (end of year national tournament), car costs, etc. $12.50 is probably just barely above McDonalds' wages and a bit lower than Home Depot / Wal-Mart. $25 is a nice decent wage for the type of person we're looking for.
And, yes, that brings us to the type of person who would best fit the needs of a youth travel team. I suppose the best possible circumstance would be someone who has played college ball in the recent past and/or has coached a bit at the school ball level. Most likely, with this schedule, we're not going to attract someone who has 25 successful seasons of coaching top level high school ball. We may pull in an assistant coach (part-time) at a small college but that seems a bit of a reach.
Another option is a girl currently in college though I'm not certain of the NCAA ramifications of that - she'll most likely have to be from a Div II or III school. I have seen college players coach for certain organizations but I'm uncertain of the divisions in which they play.
A final option, perhaps the best one is a recent graduate who has not figured out exactly what she wants to do yet. Perhaps she is giving batting or pitching instruction on the side while she substitute teaches or works part-time someplace. Maybe her career goals are ultimately to coach in high school or college and she needs to build her resume. Coaching a 16U or 14U travel team that turns out to be pretty successful might go a ways towards qualifying a new teacher or part-time employee to be an assistant at a lower level college or even to obtain a high school head coaching position. I can think of at least a couple people whose primary qualification for a HS coaching position was experience in travel. I'm not sure what college coaching positions require but I would think that experiences in travel couldn't hurt.
A gal who is making ends meet via part-time teaching stints, a few weekly softball lessons, perhaps an assistant coaching job at a high school might view the opportunity to earn an extra $2,500 favorably. A high school coach with no out-of-school plans might really appreciate the opportunity to continue coaching during the summer months while earning a few bucks to fund some vacation plans. There may be restrictions against such a coach working with any kids from his or her own high school during the period after school begins until the spring sports season. You've got to check and make sure because not only can the coach be penalized, but also the kid can be subject to certain prohibitions.
So that's where we stand with our expectations for how much we can pay a coach, what it will cost us, and the type of person who might consider taking the job. Now we need to form realistic expectations of what it means to hire a coach.
First of all, it is entirely possible that 90% of the people we might consider hiring as a coach are inferior to our existing parent-coach. That depends on how knowledgeable the parent is. I have observed a number of parent coaches who, if they chose to, would be extremely successful college coaches, perhaps even at Div I. I can think of several professional skills coaches giving private lessons who got their starts working with their own daughters. There is not a way to say that any professional team coach is always going to be better than a parent coach. But there are differences to the team dynamic when an "outsider" is making the critical decisions like who is going to play what and when.
I'm going to share with you the thoughts of Joe who has been down this road before with his daughter who is currently playing very high level ball. I am using Joe's thoughts because I want you to know that other folks have faced this already and while everyone's experiences will not be identical, I prefer to use other's thoughts in certain circumstances. In Joe's words:
"The girls knew this person was impartial and that made it an even playing field in their minds. We had the same group of girls together for two years - no cliques. They got along extremely well and, while that might just be good parenting or outright luck, I think it had something to do with the coaching. Second, we had a female coach and that was a great experience for our girls. They connected with our coach and could relate to her differently than a male/father. Our non-parent coach wasn't a great coach - she had virtually no coaching experience and, while she did a pretty good job overall, there were times when I thought "what is she doing??"
In addition to these thoughts, Joe also notes:
"We (the GMs - heads of the parent committee) took responsibility for schedules, the calendar, website, overall communication - especially with parents. It was expected that parents would come to us with issues, players would go to the coach. And we found that we had very few complaints regarding playing time, etc. When the parent/coach is taken out of the equation, there was very little room for excuses. Our philosophy was "playing time is earned, not given" and that determination was made by the coach. The GMs went to great lengths to stay out of and away from any on-field decisions. One of the side benefits was that we were unique in our area and that has attracted more and more talented players to our team."
So, that's my post for the day. I do not believe I've gone very deeply into the issue of having a paid coach for a girls travel softball team. In my area, they are not commonly seen. There are advantages and disadvantages, the primary one being cost. But I thought I'd at least begin the discussion of this issue with some thoughts about how one would go about analyzing the possibility of hiring a coach. I look forward to your comments, experiences and suggestions regarding this post but please don't merely send me stories about your experiences with daddy and mommy coaches.Labels: coaching, parents, playing time, youth tournament teams
 
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