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Shark's Gonna Shark

4/10/2021

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Start here: https://twitter.com/tomhousesports/status/1378378870458621958 

The original tweet is from a well-known baseball account, Pitching Ninja.  It’s run by a super-fan who during baseball season regularly tweets out the night’s most devastating pitches.  He’s also created a Dropbox collection of the nastiest pitches in the Majors, demonstrating how to throw each pitch.  Pitching Ninja is almost as entertaining as it is instructive.  

The man who replied with his take is perhaps the most well-known pitching coach in the history of baseball. Yes, it’s the same guy that got a ton of attention during the Super Bowl for working with both Tom Brady and Drew Brees.  Tom House also happened to catch Hank Aaron’s 715th homerun. . .and picked me out of a crowded weightroom of pitchers when I was 15 because he was confident that I could demonstrate a skill that he needed demonstrating.  (I could.)

Meanwhile, the pitcher is the best college pitching prospect since Tim Lincecum.  His name is Jack Leiter.  As of today, he’s only 20 years old.  Jack already has a no-hitter this year, and regularly throws his fastball in the mid-90s.  

And what you’re looking at is an overlay of 2 different pitches, a fastball and a curveball.  It’s not uncommon for us mere mortals (amateur pitchers) to not match our mechanics perfectly, even on 2 of the same pitches.  It’s much more difficult when throwing different pitches. One of the things that separates a certain class of professionals is how well their mechanics always look the same.  Good hitters are able to pick up on the subtle cues or differences in a delivery to help determine which pitch is coming.  What Tom House is commenting on is Jack Leiter’s repeatability, and Coach House is also marveling at how much work that took.  What Coach House is implying is that this isn’t easy, and any demonstration of a high level skill is like an iceberg -- we only see the tip; we don’t see the mass under the water supporting what we see.

What does this mean to us as parents, coaches of young players?  A lot. 

If you’ve ever talked to me about how your kid is doing, I use a lot of growth-mindset language.  For those of you who are unfamiliar, a growth mindset takes into account the things that are happening today can be changed, and will probably be different tomorrow.  Meanwhile, a fixed mindset tends to treat effort and ability as static. . .it doesn’t change much no matter the input.  So, the language you’ll hear a lot when talking about players we work with is a lot of “Well, right now,”; “She’s currently. . .”; “He doesn’t yet”.  A fixed mindset would be demonstrated by things like “He’s good,”; “Boy he hits the ball hard,”; “She’s uncoachable.”  The thing is, I don’t see your kid’s progress as static.  I see it on a continuum and totally within their control.  
We talk a lot about controlling your controllables, and using what you’re given.  Players can’t control their in-born athleticism.  We can only blame our genes (aka parents) for our gifts and deficiencies there.  I can’t control that I’m not as athletic as Coach Courtney, and we can’t control that Coach Trent makes us both look awkward.  What players can control is their effort (well, most of them can), and how well they take coaching (again, I’m a teacher, and I know that some kids are more ready to learn than others).  That’s why we work so hard on those two things first.  “Those skills scale.”  Why the quotes?  Because it’s the first of two phrases that I’m going to steal from Deven Morgan, Driveline Baseball’s youth instruction guru.

Skills that scale refers to skills that won’t depreciate over time.  Usually Driveline uses the phrase to refer to skills that directly affect competition.  Two of the big ones are “How hard the ball is struck” or exit velocity, and “How hard the ball is thrown” or throwing velocity.  Both of those skills are always worth developing, because they open doors to opportunity.  If you max out on being able to hit a ball 10% harder than your competition, if you miss hit a ball, it’s still got a chance.  If you throw 10% harder than last year, what if you use that additional force to make the ball spin a new direction?  These skills scale no matter who the competition or situation. 

Effort and coachability also scale.  As you get better and reach higher levels of competition, if you’re already used to high effort as well as asking questions, taking feedback and looking to learn new ways of performing skills, you have a massive advantage over the folks who will learn on the fly.  It’s coming into the situation with a  growth mindset.  Knowing where to direct the effort through being coachable is massive.  The people who can take that coaching and funnel it in the right direction can create something special.  These skills don’t only work in baseball or softball.  They can be generalized to other places as well.  Baseball is just a terrific way to hook so many of the kids and sneakily get them to work on these things.  (I’ve written a whole post about this concept. . .”Why Take Lessons?”, below )

So what do Jack Leiter and Tom House have to do with this?  I’m going to steal the second line from Deven Morgan to make the point.  “Shark’s gonna shark.”  I’ve worked with youth athletes for over 20 years now, and agree 100% with Coach Morgan.  Shark is always gonna shark.  No matter what protocols we give the athletes.  No matter how we train them.  No matter the cues and coaching.  That shark is still gonna be a shark at the end of the day.  It’s an inarticulate, but highly accurate metaphor for working with kids.  No matter what we do, kids will be inconsistent with physical skills.  No matter what we do, sharks will still get the scent of blood, and need to feed.  Kids are terrible at making adjustments and then carrying them out consistently in stressful situations.  There’s brain research to back this up, and no matter how much time we dig into this with our young athletes, they’re still going to be inconsistent.

It drives us, and other coaches, nuts.  NUTS!  We spend hours working with kids on their strength and range of motion to make sure that they will be comfortable getting into a good groundball fielding position.  We drill.  We show them video.  We do variable blocks of training to mess with it.  Then when we see the kid during the summer, their legs are straight and eyes might as well be looking up to the sky while fielding.  Shark’s gonna shark.  

We mortals watch professional or college athletes do their thing, and think that A) they’re similarly skilled -- they’re not even close  B) they’ve always been like that  -- nope.  All young athletes go through this “Shark” phase, and it can be really long.  Most athletes don’t stick with their sport or activity long enough to get out of this phase.  Read that sentence again.  Keep it in mind the next time you are watching your athlete or their teammates.  

What helps?  Coaching, communication, practice (lots, way more than you probably think, and it depends on how good of an athlete you are), reflection, and the ability to be mindful of your body and movements (athleticism).  You can see that some of that is in our control and some of it isn’t.  One last thing helps . . . acknowledging that inconsistency is a major factor in your youth sports, and not being satisfied with that answer.

The next time you watch a guy like Jack Leiter pitch, understand that some of us still see the last bit of ‘shark’ that they’re trying to shake off (as are most of the guys on the Timber Rattlers).  It takes a “blueprint and work put in to be this repeatable by the time you’re in college”, and he’s an unfinished project.  Also keep it in mind the next time you’re watching a 14 year-old this summer, sometimes that shark’s just gonna shark. . .but they could be working on it.
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Why Take Lessons?

6/24/2019

 
​I’m going to come right out and say it. . .the desire to play professional baseball is not the best reason to play baseball.  (Plus, playing professional baseball might not be all that appealing anyway.)  You’ve probably seen these before, but I’m going to share with you some statistics:
    In 2017-18, 487,097 high school boys participated in baseball in the United States.  
    In the same year, 34,980 young men played NCAA baseball.  Of those, 2.1% played in Division 1 and 2.2% played in Division 2.  2.8% played in Division 3. Among all divisions, the squads averaged almost 35 guys per squad.  
    That means that in Division 1, 35 guys were eligible for a share of the 11.7 scholarships available to each team.  In Division 2, those 35 guys share 9 scholarships.  There are no athletic scholarships available to the 61.9% of all NCAA baseball players in Division 3.
    I’ll do the math, which you’ve probably seen before:
    If you play high school baseball, there is about a 7% chance that you’d play any baseball the following year in the NCAA.  (Not taking into account students that come to the United States from other countries and play baseball – Canada, Japan and Mexico chief among them, and I know that I'm ignoring NAIA and JUCOs to keep this simpler.)
    Dreaming of a college scholarship?  If you played ball in high school, you have a 4% chance to play the next year at a Division 1 or 2 school.  However, as you’ve probably already realized, if you have 35 guys on the roster of your typical college team, but only about 10 scholarships. . .you’re not getting much of your education paid for. . .that is assuming the program that you’re going to is fully funded.  (If you want a complete breakdown including NAIA and NJCAA schools, you can find that here.)
    Your chances do get slightly better though when you consider the 0.5% of high school players who choose to forgo college and jump right to the pros!  Although if you stick it out in college, you’ll have about a 10% chance of getting drafted, although that number is significantly skewed toward Division 1.  (11 players were drafted from Division 3 in 2018, nearly all of them were pitchers) 
    All this competition for a job in the Minor Leagues that pays about $1,100 a month.  . .for 5 months. (Did I mention that players don't get paid during spring training?) Plus, there are the working conditions.  
    But there’s a huge payoff if you get to the Majors!  Absolutely. If you make it, and stick around. Once you get to the Minors there’s a 10% chance to make it to the Majors.  The average Minor Leaguer gets to the Majors when they're 27, if they make it. That'd be about 5 years of banging around the minors, getting paid virtually nothing.  (The Blue Jays are the first club to announce that they’re going to pay players 50% better than virtually nothing.)    During the first several years, you're entirely under club control and will likely make the league minimum.  Major League minimum salary is $535,000 while median income for young adults is $50,000. There is no guarantee that when you make it to the Majors that you stick around.
    I’m not trying to chase you away from your dream, but I want you to go in with eyes wide open.  
    It’s great to dream, but it’s more important to have goals.  That’s where taking learning from quality folks can make a huge difference for students, not just on the field, but away from it.
    People do lessons for different reasons, and it’s lessons in anything, not just baseball.  You get many of the same benefits from taking music classes, art, computer programming, or sports.  
By taking any lessons you learn how to:
  • handle adversity
  • deal with pressure
  • organize your time
  • prioritize
  • practice with a goal in mind
  • be patient
  • develop self-esteem
  • build discipline
  • become comfortable with challenge
  • concentrate
    If you’re doing baseball lessons, you get to add in things like:
  • body awareness
  • physical fitness
  • hand-eye coordination
  • sport-specific skills
  • awesomeness
        Many parents ‘force’ their kids to take a class or lessons outside of school.  We don’t need to make them dance, take piano (my sister is killing me a little right now), baseball or knitting.  We get most of the same benefits by taking any of those classes. Match your kiddo to what interests them! You have instant buy-in and you still get to sneakily ‘force’ them into learning tremendous life skills.  Do lessons for the benefits, not because they’re going to get you to the Bigs. (If you’re the one in a thousand, good teachers will only help AND you’ll get your opportunity, but the chances are that you’re going to be going pro in something else, right NCAA?)
      Invest in your kids and who we want them to be, not what we want them to be.  The payoff will be worth it.

Parenting Ball Players

3/31/2018

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We wrapped up our first Off-Season Training program last night.  It was a 6 month-long adventure in baseball and softball.  We set out to help 22 softball players and 15 baseball players improve their confidence and competence in the sports that they love.  The other coaches and I were blown away by the tremendous gains these kids made, and we're excited to release them fully to their community teams.

At the start, we asked the kids and parents to trust that what would be taught would be developmentally appropriate and full of failure. . .and that would be OK.  We asked the parents for the freedom to coach.  We asked the young athletes for their best efforts.  Thank you to both groups for giving both.

Before we even started, we asked each athlete to fill out a series of questions to help us understand each one as ball players.  We wanted to know about their goals, their strengths, weaknesses, past injuries, and their preferred positions--pretty typical stuff.  One of the last questions though was a little different.  We asked the kids, "What could your parents work on to become better sports parents?"  (I added 'Remember they signed you up for this, paid money, and will be bringing you every time!' -- just in case they might forget to be appreciative during their response.)

Folks, the responses were heartfelt, honest, and worth hearing.  Here's a sampling: 

Be patient with my learning
Stop the in-game feedback
Calm down with umpires, coaches and players
Don't talk to me during games
Not screaming at me 
Quieter from the bleachers
Not looking at me 
Don't be competitive about games
Help me with my confidence ---lots of variations on this one

Certainly times have both changed and really haven't.  As parents we all want something simple: the best for our kids.  And we're going to do the best we know how to get the best for our kids that we can.  Everything that appears in the list above comes from a place of love, and best intentions.  The message is not being received with love and best intentions.  It's being received with judgement attached to the idea that the kids aren't good enough for them to be treated well.  The kids love their parents, and these things certainly taint the relationship, but more often, these bad feelings end up being attached to something that isn't unconditional--the sport.  If the sport is eliminated, so is the source of judgement and hurt.  It becomes better if they quit the sport that they enjoy.

As a sports parent, you love watching your kids play, right?  Of course you do.  Let's keep them playing then.  I have some suggestions about how to help.

Step one is to tell them that you love to watch them play.  That's it. You don't have to go farther than that.  As a parent, that's all the kids want to hear from you.  

When they're with their teams, go away, unless you've been invited to help the team.  If you're not actively engaged with something that a coach has asked you to do, you're lurking -- scram.  It's important for the kids to have relationships without you involved.  This builds independence and unless you want them living with you at 32, this is a safe and important place for young athletes to practice independence.  

During games, here's the good news. . .you still get to talk.  Here's the bad news, you have to watch your language, and where your butt is located.  First, get away from the dugout.  If you feel yourself creeping closer to the dugout, maybe have a designated buddy who can gently pull you away.  Remember that part about building independence and relationships?  Every time you go toward the dugout to tell your ballplayer something, it undermines both their independence and relationships within their teams.  If they need something, they'll call you over, promise.

Is anyone saying you can't cheer?  No way!  Cheering's the best.  Remember though, you are not competing.  Even youth coaches need to keep this in mind.  (if you need a competitive outlet, find one for yourself.  Don't compete through your kids.)  Exciting things happen during sports, and one of the most awesome benefits is sharing the experience.  When you are the cause of the celebration, it's one of the greatest feelings in the world.  Cheer and encourage your heart out.  Keep your words general though  (Crush it Becki!, Come on Tyler!, YAAAAASSSS!) , and never, ever use a child's name at the start of a sentence while 'cheering'.  It can't help but sound like a command for their attention.  

Quick note about yelling at coaches, kids and umpires.  Don't.  Just don't.  It's never a good look.  Ever.  They're all trying their best.  If there's a problem with an opposing player not being safe, let the umpires and coaches sort it out.  If they want your help, they'll ask, but they won't, cuz they don't.  Your yelling at strangers from the stands only scares everyone involved, and if that's your goal, maybe you should be reevaluating what you're doing at a youth sporting event.

After the game, first take a breath.  Check your face to make sure it's not anywhere near the mad, sad, or disappointed end of the spectrum.  That will be interpreted by the kids that you're feeling that way about them.  Even if you are, that's about you, not them.  Don't taint their experience.  Tell them you loved watching them play.  That's it.  Walk out, and maybe make plans to follow the Skittle Rule.

I get the Skittle Rule from my sister, who never sportsed.  But she is a musician and artist.  Her piano teacher and my parents kept a bowl of skittles on the piano.  This simple thing caused her to associate her love of candy with music and practice.  In my family, the Skittle Rule has become the Ice Cream Rule. . .if we have time after games, we always go get some ice cream (usually JDs).  Celebrating a fun game only gets better with ice cream and no loss is ever as bad as it seems if you get some ice cream afterward.  

Finally, can you imagine how difficult it is for professional athletes who either lost or didn't have a good game to be interviewed after a game?  Think about that for a second.  I'll wait. 

Did you actually think about it?  I hope so, because now consider that's what you're doing to a less emotionally mature person when you try to talk with them about the game they just played.  Not good. 

Do this instead. . .tell them you loved watching them play, and follow the Skittle Rule.

In our house, we've established the groundrule that we only talk about games if my kids bring them up.  We rarely talk about games.

Being a part of these kids lives continues to be a privilege, and I hope to continue to have the opportunity to help their confidence and competence grow.  If we keep them playing, I'll always have things to teach.  This game is hard enough.  It's already a game of failure and disappointment. Let's try to keep that disappointment and failure on the field, where it belongs.  

Wanna try something different this summer?  Try a video game making class!  Taught in Appleton by professional teachers.  Check us out!  Class Descriptions here.

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    John Hendrick
      

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