To us, travel ball is about development. Development as an athlete, but more importantly development as a functional member of society. It’s about building relationships with like minded individuals in the pursuit of a dream. The dream, of course, is to play at the highest level possible. Helping players reach “the dream” is what it’s all about. The highest level is individual to each player. Sure, most of us have the dream as playing on a big league field some day for our favorite team. A very small percentage of us will ever accomplish that dream…but why not give it our best shot? One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Wayne Gretzky “you miss 100% of the shots you never take”. If you never shoot, you never score.
The question to ask yourself is, what is your shot going to look like? To me, your shot isn’t one moment in time. Your shot begins when you start the journey to accomplishing your dream. Whether your dream is to play in high school, college or the pros. Your shot has to give you every opportunity possible to reach that dream.
So what should that shot look like? To me, it begins with who you surround yourself with. Surround yourself with players of the same mind set. Surround yourself with coaches who have your best interests in mind. Surround yourself with an organization/team that develops your specific needs as a player. We are not cookie cutters of each other. We are all individuals. We preach to our players that there is not one way to do something in this sport or in life and if you have been told otherwise, you are being mis-lead.
So what is development? Development is the process of growing, becoming more mature, advanced or elaborate according to dictionary.com. Development is also continuing to make progress. If your focus is not on development and progress, you will be left behind. Don’t let that happen.
How does a player develop? Specific to this sport development comes in a number of ways. A few ways that we help players develop are:
+Creating a welcoming and positive atmosphere- Players play better when they feel valued, encouraged, welcomed and a part of something bigger than them.
+Purposeful and productive practices- We want practices without wasted time where players are standing around doing nothing. Wait time itself should be productive. It could be a rest and recover time, it could be a time for instruction, it could be a time for mental reps, etc.
+Repetition of game-like situations- Preparing kids for things that happen in the games, outside of the games. Creating game-like situations in a practice setting is the best way to ensure players are not surprised by what can actually happen in games.
+Providing opportunities to play/learn multiple positions and encouraging different sport participation- This will build the over all athlete. Even if a player ends up playing only 1 position at a high level. Learning different positions and playing different sports has immeasurable benefits.
+Sport specific fitness training- players should be building strength, endurance, explosiveness and flexibility related to the sport they play
+Evaluation and reflection- This is a way to ensure players are developing. Assessing is a key part of learning. Having players reflect on their own play and progress helps the players see that they are heading in the right direction.
+Playing in tournaments- I left this one last for a reason. My true beliefs are that tournaments have their place in the sport and are important, but playing in tournaments every weekend is not where true development happens. This might be a separate article but think of how many reps you get in a game compared to how many reps you get in a well designed practice. Everyone likes to compete and everyone like to win, but is that truly what is important? If it is, our program is definitely not right for you. We use tournaments as an assessment instrument to see what we need to work on in practice to make sure our players get better. If we win that’s awesome, if we don’t, we have come out with things we need to work on for each individual player.
This is a small snapshot of what we hope you are getting out of your baseball/softball experience. If you play for our program we value you and appreciate your dedication and work ethic. If you don’t play for our organization we still want you to succeed. Just promise me this…that you will make sure your shot gives you every opportunity to score.
Article by Coach LeClair
Director of Baseball