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!
