The Sad Reality is You Will Coach Your Son or Daughter for the Last Time Someday
There comes a point in every parent coach’s life, if their children are fortunate and talented enough to continue playing, that we are no longer able to be a part of the decision-making process associated with their success. It’s the moment that we go from coach and parent, back to “just” mom or dad.
While the role of being a parent is the most important one you will ever play in your child’s life, it’s not easy to watch the decisions getting made by the new coach in their lives and not question what they are doing sometimes. Actually, coaches disagreeing is normal. Different philosophies exist. But it can be hard to emotionally let go of that on-the-field support that you once had. That holds true for the whole family, player included.
Our Dynamic Role as Parents
But our role as parents transforms as our children grow regardless of whether they are playing baseball, or any other sport for that matter. Even if we wish somedays that time would slow down.
As our kids reach their teenage years, we are less able to sway their decision making. Friends and other adults’ opinions start to matter more. But that doesn’t mean that we have no role to play. It’s just that we need to recognize when it’s time for our roles to change.
From Coach to Personal Trainer
Even if you have never coached your children in any sport, your role will become more like that of a coach as they grow. You get the chance to huddle up occasionally and give them your thoughts on things, but you get to make fewer and fewer decisions for them as time goes on.
This transition can be tough on the heart if you aren’t looking out for the newfound benefits of your position. But there are bright sides, and on the best days, you will be able to model for your child what you are hoping to instill in them.
Even though you can no longer decide where they fit best on the field or lineup, you still have an important part to play. You are still there to coach them at home. To help them get their reps in between practices. This is probably the hardest job because it requires consistent focus and a personalized plan to help your player continue to grow. While it won’t get you a lot of visibility, this is the most important work that you can do to support your child’s success.
Added side benefits include: bonding over your shared love of sport, fitness opportunities for you and for them, excuses to get outside together, and 1-1 focus with your kid that you don’t have many other reasons for over the course of any given day. In other words, it’s good for your heart too coach.
The Work You Do Off the Field Matters
The truth of any youth sports league is that there often isn’t enough time for training that is focused just on the individual player and helping them to improve their game. That’s because there is so much work that needs to be done with the players working together when the whole team is out there, that it would be a missed opportunity to be focused on only individual drills.
That’s why working at home, or in a facility that you can afford to access (like the one we are determined to build), is critical to the success of your player. Not even travel baseball is going to get your player enough reps to improve if they are just standing around in more games. I talk about that more here.
Self-Reflection After Coaching
One silver lining of no longer being in the decision-making position is that you get to see if you were looking at your kid with rose-colored glasses or not. So long as there is no bad blood between the coach and your kid or between the coach and you for some reason, you should be able to relatively accurately gauge if you were overestimating their skills or not.
If your once-all-star is suddenly a bench warmer, you both might need some time to reflect. It may mean that they didn’t have the skills you thought they did. That’s important information for you to use to help them to grow on the other side. Instead of taking it personally, take it as a call to action.
But even if your kiddo is still one of the first-string players, there is still plenty of room to grow. Even major league players are constantly working on their game.
That’s because we are constantly changing as individuals. There is no way to just live at the peak of perfection. Even yogic traditions would tell you that you can touch enlightenment but because of living a human existence, you couldn’t ever really expect to stay there all the time. But touching that bliss is an incredible experience and certainly is worth chasing, in my opinion. Also, yoga helps me to keep being able to be there for my boys. I can still sit comfortably on the ground and get up with relative ease. I can still catch for them when they need my assistance. All of that I owe to a decade of regular yoga practice.
But this isn’t a PSA for yoga. It’s a PSA for knowing that just because you are no longer coaching your kid in a professional capacity (even volunteers count) doesn’t mean that your coaching has to end. It just means that instead of focusing on the whole team, you now get the luxury of just focusing on your player. That is something they will feel if you allow yourself to lean into the new position.
Access Is the Real Barrier
If you care enough to have ready this far, you already have everything you need to start. We’re just here to help you organize yourself for success.
We are working to create a one-stop-shop of great resources from reputable sources that you will be able to use as a framework for building out what you and your player will need to continue to get better every day.
One of the biggest challenges with baseball in particular today is access. Specifically, because of the rising costs of playing. See more on that topic here. And while our training facility is aiming at having an affordable monthly cost, it’s not ready yet, so we are working here to bring you as many free resources as we can to make sure you can get to work now while we build. Also, if you aren’t local to where we end up making this facility, we don’t want that to be yet another barrier to your success.
Why We’re Building Something Different
We noticed that when we took our kids to some of the baseball training facilities in the area, they kept things intentionally obtuse. There was no onboarding to speak of and definitely no instruction as to what to do with the time that you were paying a premium for.
That’s not an accident. I get it. That’s a funnel to their private coaches. But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if you were in the driver’s seat with tutorials for warmup and cooldown stretches and inspiration for what to do with your time in the lanes or cages? Wouldn’t that be a better way to keep you coming back? We certainly think so.
Allow me to officially welcome you to your at-home coaching onboarding. If you are all in and ready to learn how to help your player better, welcome. We hope you’ll subscribe to our mailing list to get updates as we roll out more of our offerings. Take a look around the site to see what we already have that might help right away.
Baseball shouldn’t cost a fortune. We’re looking to change that and hope you’ll support us in doing so.
Until next time, you’ve got this coach,
