Baseball season is arriving in the pros with spring training coming around the corner shortly and some amateur baseball seasons – whether it be little league baseball or high school games – may have even already begun. With baseball season really starting to rev up, it’s always good to have a few tricks up your sleeve in regards to how to keep your players engaged and motivated.

Let’s run through some of the best ways to go about that as a coach:

Keep it Loose

First thing’s first, it’s always important to have a time and a place for discipline and the hard work in practice. But for the most part, you’ll want to make practice fun, make it competitive and stay away from redundancy and drills that are a giant bore. You’re at practice to get better, but you’re also there to grow as a team and come together. Creating competition, joking with players and even rewarding them (we’ll touch on that later) can be very big in keeping them engaged and it doesn’t even take all that much to get it done. This can and should stretch into games, too. Let kids chew on seeds in the dug out, encourage conversation during the game, and make sure your players are focused but always having fun. 

Bulletin Board

One of the best ways to motivate a player or a team is to go to where the heart of the team is – in the locker room. This is where the kids start their practice and game days and it’s usually where they end them, too. From photos of legendary ball players to classic quotes to goals they can chase, you can litter the locker room with various motivating criteria that can help get your team ready for the task at hand, and you don’t even have to be present to have it kick in. 

Give Feedback

Individually and as a team, you’re going to want to let the players know how they’re doing. It’s always good to take a struggling player aside and dish out a little needed criticism, but then pile on top of that 2-3 compliments about what they usually are good at or what they are presently doing well. If a player is in a hitting slump, you can pull them aside and inform them you’re aware of the drought, and they don’t have to worry about it as long as they keep giving you 100% on defense like they have been, and so on. Even when players are doing well, they still need positive reinforcement at times so they know they’re on the right path and that the hard work and good production they’re putting forth is noticed and appreciated. Players are people with feelings and goals. If you help them stay the course by showing them you’re thankful, impressed or even proud, it can be huge in their development and will only strengthen them as a team.

Reward Them

How do you get teams to play better, to stay engaged, to willingly increase their focus and effort? Reward them. You never want it to get to the point where there is always a carrot hanging from a rope or that they will only get this if they do this, but there is a proper place for rewarding your players. If we give it out all and that is evident, then this happens, or if we win the title we get new custom baseball uniforms for next year. It can be big or small, but sprinkling in rewards for your team to chase after in addition to individual and team goals can be highly beneficial.

Fire Them Up

It sounds silly and overly simple, but what better way to motivate your team than give them a motivational speech? Not everyone can pull off an Al Pacino speech or fire teams up like Tim Tebow did at Florida, but you have life experiences and probably played baseball in your past, so you can dig deep and offer them something genuine that they will respect. Two of the cores of motivation are respect and inspiration, so if you feed off of some humility and can relate it to what they can achieve, you may have something. It doesn’t need to necessarily be a do or die speech and it doesn’t need to be at a specific time, but getting down to earth with your team and pulling back the coach mask and showing your humanity every now and then can definitely pull everyone closer together as they fight for the same unified goal.

Got motivational ideas or tips of your own? Feel free to share with us in the comments below!

There is a first for just about everything in life and whether you have kids playing little league baseball or not, you may come across your first opportunity to coach a team eventually. If you’re like most people, you’ll probably only want to take on such a job if you’re either a big fan of the sport or get the chance to teach your own child. Either way, though, you’ll also likely be interested in “hitting it out of the park” when it comes to doing a good job.

How do you know you’re doing a good job and becoming the best little league baseball coach you can be, though? A lot of it is opinion and an argument can be made that only your players can answer that for sure, but chances are if you try to follow a few of our tips, you’ll do okay:

Embrace the Hate

Hopefully you know when it goes too far, but there has to be a certain point to where you’ll let parents and kids express their own beliefs. Tearing you or other players down is never excusable, but you should always respect your players and their parents. With that being said, you definitely don’t always have to agree with them or give in to their demands. You’re the coach and this is your show, but if you let everyone feel like they’re being heard, and you go in knowing you can’t please everyone, you’ll be ahead of the curve.

Learn the Basics

This is especially true if you weren’t a player in your past or if you’ve never coached. Even if you had played and/or coached before, there are still going to be a lot of tidbits you can pick up along the way. But if you are a newbie at being the top guy for a little league baseball team, you should make sure you’re well informed. Researching the game, how to manage a team and strategies is just the tip of the iceberg. If you actually want to be successful in terms of winning games and developing your talent, you may want to enhance your research and preparation. After all, the better you prepare yourself and your players, the less our first tip may even come into play.

Get Ready Early

One of the big things when first starting out is to be so prepared that no one can even tell that this is your first year on the job. It’s going to be hard enough figuring out how to adjust your roster and strategies on the fly, so it’s a good idea to make sure there are very few (if any) unplanned obstacles that pop up and make your coaching life harder than it has to be.

This can be a number of things, ranging from ordering your team’s custom baseball uniforms on time, to getting connected with players and their parents, to knowing the league schedule and truly, the list can go on and on. It’s not always possible to knock out everything before the season starts or even before your first practice, but creating a checklist and narrowing it down as best as possible can only help you.

There is more to learn and know about becoming a good little league baseball coach, but starting with these three key tips will certainly point you in the right direction. In summary, if you want to be a good first year coach, you want to prepare to be challenged by players and parents, know what you’re doing and talking about when it comes to the sport in general and have all of your bases covered when it comes to everything the team needs to operate effectively.

If you get those three areas down before the season begins, you’ll be in a good spot to do well during your first season.

Got tips of your own for fresh little league baseball coaches? Feel free to share them in the comments below!

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Posted on: 21 Feb 2016, 18:30

Posted in: Little League

Author: Kevin Roberts

Tags: Little League Baseball, Coaching Tips

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