In reply to volvoclearinghouse :
Yes, I have a face perfect for radio. Keep in mind you don't want to be as loud as a bullhorn, the PA system will do that for you. The other thing cool about doing it is that you get the best view in the house. There were several years where I announced tons of games that my boys weren't playing in. I enjoyed doing it and most parents are afraid of it.
He had his first baseball practice last night. It was cool and windy, but they did some warm ups and basic fielding and base running drills. The coach was good with the kids and kept practice organized and fun. I introduced myself and my son before we started and offered to help if he needed any- I'd brought my glove. He thanked me and I stuck around to watch. The kids' skill levels (this is 8U) were all over the place- 2 of them seemed to know each other and were tossing the ball a base length between them and catching it. A couple of kids could not yet throw a ball overhand. One little boy didn't seem to know what bases were.
Little VCH was somewhere in between, and coach told me afterwards he had hustle and potential. He is still talking about it this morning- even though they didn't even touch a bat the whole time- and is looking forward to next practice. The weather is warming up now so we'll get out and do some drills in the backyard between now and then, too.
That's great news, and hopefully he continues to enjoy it for years to come.
Good work dad. With my daughter doing so well I now with that I had started her earlier.
Where is that I'm not trying to brag thread. As a freshman she has now lettered in two sports, field hockey and basketball. Basket ball record this year was 2-22, not a lot of winning but a lot of celebration of small accomplishments and positive energy. It's still her favorite sport, Softball tryouts are this week.
Remember to keep it fun, don't talk about a bad game on the way home only reminders of the good plays or moments if they want to talk. There will be struggles and losses celebrate the good forget the bad. Good after game or in game sharing snacks if allowed go a long way.
In reply to volvoclearinghouse :
Wish I had seen this thread sooner. I was a music/band kid growing up. The kid is full-on with sports, so I feel your pain. I had very little in common with most of the "sports dads" at first, who all seemed to have played Little League/HS Ball/College Ball, but I try to muddle through.
I'm happy that Little VCH had a good start with practice. Having a reasonable first coach is key to making sure your kid likes the sport and has fun with it.
Our son is adopted, and when he came home at 2 1/2, my wife (a huge baseball fan) started out tossing a ball to him and got him a little plastic bat. He did T-ball, loved it, did town Cal Ripken league (the competing organization to Little League), loved it, and made the town All-Star Teams for a few years. He's now 17 and has been playing competitive travel club baseball the last couple of summers and is looking forward to a varsity baseball season in high school. He started out as a catcher, but has now settled into 3rd base / middle infield. When he was doing 8U / 9U ball, I knew the head coach, and helped out as an "assistant", basically being the guy that kept the kids from climbing the fences while on the bench.
The kid is also playing football as a Fall sport. Head-injury risk aside, football provides the deepest team camaraderie we've seen in any of the sports the kid has played. Don't know if it's the whole "warrior ethic" thing, or just the fact that you work together all week for one game (as opposed to multiple games per week for baseball), but I would say that socially, football has been a net positive. He played only one season in middle school (thanks, COVID), then picked it up again sophomore year in high school. Our town doesn't have a Pop Warner program for younger kids, but I don't know that I'd have wanted him to play tackle football earlier than middle school (he did play flag football).
Prior to that, the kid was also into soccer for a number of years (with futsal in the winter). His interest in it waned when he didn't make the travel team one year. For a couple of years, though, busy as they were, I used to like our 3-sport Saturdays: Fall baseball in the morning, soccer in the afternoon, and flag football under the lights.
The programs get more intense as they get older, so it gets harder to stay a multi-sport athlete with the way many programs are set-up. For my kid, pre-season training for summer club baseball starts when football ends in November, and High School football "camp" starts when summer baseball ends in August, so he's busy all year - which for my kid, is a good thing.
"Hustle and potential" are the best things to have at Little VCH's age - motor control skills, size, intuition, etc. all vary wildly kid-to-kid at this point, so trying hard and not getting discouraged easily are the best attributes to have.
Good luck!
VCH sounds like a great start!
In reply to nlevine :
Agreed on the social side of football. My son is built kind of like a grizzly, with similar fine motor skills, so he never really enjoyed soccer or baseball. He kind of landed in football, and it gave him a great support network transitioning into middle school and high school.
He's 24 now, and still hangs out and travels with friends he met in 2nd-3rd grade flag football.
The head injury risk is real, though. He got a bad one Sophomore year that required a couple months of vestibular therapy (PT for your eyes). Game over for football after that.
I figured I'd update here in case anyone is curious, and share my experiences to add to the collective experience with kids and sports. Some of what I share has been shared by others, much will probably be familiar.
For the first few practices, I was sort of in a bubble as to what was going on. I didn't have any experience with playing baseball, and only understood the sport as much as I'd watched it on TV and going to a few minor league games and an O's game or 3 in my life. I also had never done sports with my kids, and only had whatever memories were still rattling around my 46-year-old brain from when I played sports 3 decades ago. I never saw things from an adult perspective, until now.
Our coach is a very good man, as far as I can tell. He was in the Army, so he addresses other adults as 'sir' and goes by the kids' last names, which does help eliminate confusion. There are two brothers on the team, so he calls them "Big" and "Little". He's extremely patient with them and his overriding goal is to have fun. Which is all cool with me. After the first couple of practices, me and this other dad notice that coach is all alone - we had no assistant coach - so we go out at practice and help shag balls and work with the kids a little. Coach is very appreciative of this. I can't help but notice we are, coincidentally, pretty much the only parents who a) stuck around during practices, and b) are reasonably in shape. The other dad used to play baseball, and while I'm fairly uncoordinated, I make up for it in enthusiasm.
I missed the first game; I had signed up for a 24 Hours of leMons race before the baseball schedule came out and it was on that weekend. Mrs. VCH took him. The other team's coach apparently didn't understand the 8U rules and my son's team lost in a close one. OK, no big deal, stuff happens, this ain't the World Series. Little VCH didn't play very well- he didn't hit any pitches and was struggling in the outfield. He was sad they lost, but recommitted to working harder and getting better. All encouraging stuff. So after the race I started working with him in the backyard and he's getting better. At this point, the weather starts getting pretty dicey, and practices/ game start getting postponed due to rain and the field being too soggy to play. But, we kept working on fundamentals at home, as weather allowed. One particularly rainy day I took him to the indoor batting cages for an hour. He loved it. He and his older sister took turns swatting at balls and had a great time.
Despite not being able to practice as a team, the games get better. They lost the next couple, but were improving. One of the other 2 teams were also really...good. Like, suspiciously good. It also became apparent that our team was the only one with only 1 official coach. Every other team had a couple of assistant coaches. I talked to the coach about this, apparently no one had volunteered. I felt bad- I hadn't volunteered when we signed little VCH up because I figured I had 0 experience either playing ball or coaching and would be terrible. Also, apparently coaches had to pass a background check and take sexual harassment training. This is....unfortunately a sign of our times. I hate that that's a thing. At this point it's too late to do all this, so I talked with that other dad who had been helping out at practices, and we both just started acting as "assistant coaches", helping out during the games. These kids needed help, and the coach needed help.
The team finally win a game, and spirits are lifted. Little VCH is hitting balls now, and he's the fastest guy out there so he can pretty much always make it to the base. Fielding skills are not strong at this age level, so the team that gets the most hits usually wins. They win some, they lose some. There's only 3 other teams in the league, so they play every team 3x. One team is much worse than them, one (noted above) is suspiciously good and stacked with kids that seem a little older and bigger than everyone else. And one team is about the same level.
The really good team creams us 3 times. They have a 5 run limit per inning, and they hit that limit pretty much all the time. There's also a 20 run max differential, so after 4 or 5 innings the game gets called. Games are 6 inning max anyway, or no more than 1.5 hours. Because fielding is so....variable, they have it set up that you can only take 1 base per hit, unless the ball goes into the outfield on the hit, then you can take bases until the ball makes it back to the infield.
They played the team that was fairly equal to them last night. They were up by 2 but then lost by 3. Tough game. I had my first experience of light heckling- I was watching first base and there were several tight, close calls with runners from our team just barely making it as the ball was thrown and caught. If I can't tell who got there first, I give it to the runner, however the other team's dugout was right on the 1rst base side so they saw everything and one call they thought our runner was out- and told me so. I just kept my back to them and ignored them, I figured that was the right thing to do. They ended up wining anyway.
Our team- the kids abilities are all over the place. There's 3 kids that I would say bat well- they hit every time- and can catch and field decently. There's another 2 or 3 kids- and being as fair and unbiased as I can, little VCH is among those 2 or 3- who can hit, but struggle with either throwing, or catching, or both. Little VCH can really wallop the ball- he's only one of two kids that can hit it to the outfield- runs the fastest, and usually gets his throws where they need to be. But...he can't catch, hardly at all, and struggles with fielding. We're working on that. The rest of the team is...really not good. They're the youngest kids, and the smallest. One of them is coach's son. Unfortunately, he also has a bit of "coach's son attitude". He can hit, but is pretty mediocre otherwise. But he has a loud, kind of foul mouth, and talks back to his dad- in front of the rest of the team. He's pretty obnoxious. If he gets out and doesn't understand why or doesn't agree, he throws tantrums. I try to be patient with him but...wow.
Another of the smaller kids is a real clown, I can tell the type immediately. Authority questioner. Doesn't listen, doesn't do what he is asked to do. Again, he can hit, usually, but is worthless on the field. He tries my patience, but try not to let it show. One time I asked him to throw me the ball, he runs up to about 10 feet from me, and chucks it as hard as he can- over my head, over the fence, and hits another parent in the shoulder. He's...a piece of work. There was another kid similar to him, but he dropped down to T-ball after a week or two in the season, which was a good move, probably.
The rest of the kids are just small, young, and not very physical. We work with them, and they improve, slowly. But they're at least trying. You watch them play, and feel bad for them and their parents when they don't hit anything and can't find the ball.
A couple of the other coaches on other teams are real pieces of work, too. I hear them trash talk their own kids and feel bad for the kids and their parents. Stuff I'd never say to my kid, let alone somebody else's. They take it pretty seriously, like they're expecting pro scouts to be out at the 8U games. I try to make everything I say be encouraging- nice try, almost had it, or, good swing, do that again and watch the ball - trying to be helpful and positive. My feeling is it should be fun, but also that wining is part of the fun, so they do need to get better, not just "have fun" and go through the motions of being on the baseball field. With the one kid dropping out and usually one kid or another sick or something, we struggle to have 9 guys show up at a game. It's hard to have 9 little guys cover a field- even the smaller field they play on. But they do get a lot of at bats.
There's probably stuff I'm forgetting here. As we're nearing the end of the season, little VCH still seems enthusiastic, and wanting to learn. He plays well with other kids, never has arguments with anyone, and has even made a few friends- they hang out after the games and play catch. Which is awesome. One of the little boys who usually sticks around with him has been struggling hitting, and in the last few games has made some hits, so they're bringing each other up in skills they might be lacking in. Again, awesome. They have the summer off, and there's a fall league which I expect he'll be looking forward to.
I definitely plan on volunteering for assistant coach next time. I actually enjoy helping in my "unofficial" capacity and even with my somewhat limited skills my experience has shown they don't need great baseball players to help out, they just need willing warm bodies.
Thank you. Sounds like you're doing everything right.
We are aged out of the program several years now, but the comments about some of the kids and parents sounds familiar. More the parents than the kids. I can recall a couple of incidents where one or both got way beyond any reasonable standard for human behavior in the context of youth sports. Just wow.
Rec league was always a very wide range of abilities, which can be a bit frustrating. And yes, the stacked team is a thing, and not a good thing. My youngest played a few seasons of travel ball which fixes that problem--everybody can play pretty well, but it takes a bit more commitment, and travel.
In retrospect, I look back on those days with mostly good memories, and I feel pretty sure my son feels the same way.
As a referee, I have to do a background check annually and go through Safesport training (4 hours?) every 2 years, with a refresher (30 minutes?) on the off year.
It is annoying and tedious, but I'm happy that they make us do it. Most of it is "hey, that situation that you saw that seemed off? Yeah, should probably check on that. Here is how to do it appropriately"
I did some sports as a kid - one unmemorable season of soccer and one of cricket, the latter was painful because I was 12 and in Australia and all the other kids had grown up with a cricket bat in their hand. Mostly I did solo sports like skiing and cycling because I didn't want to be tied down by the schedule of other kids if I wanted to play. But I did get into music pretty heavily in grade 8 and followed that all the way through university. Meanwhile, my two nephews here in town are playing soccer and hockey, and it's got me thinking about the benefits.
Not the physical benefits, although there are definitely some. But the social and teamwork benefits. The kids are learning that you can't win a game alone, that you have to show up to practice and can't just blow off a game - both things that I got from music. You need to practice, you need to commit, you need to show up, you need to work together. That teamwork forges some strong bonds and teaches a lot of responsibility. Plus the sports are teaching that you don't always win but you've gotta get off your butt and go into the next game trying just as hard anyway. Also, that you're not automatically the best thing ever and that you can learn from other people.
Luckily, the local hockey program has an absolutely fantastic culture. Soccer is pretty good but it's soccer, so cheap shots and diving is part of the game ;)
My wife and I have started playing hockey as well - mostly because the kids are - and it's her first time playing a team sport. It's fun watching her learn many of the same things.
Keith Tanner said:it's got me thinking about the benefits.
Not the physical benefits, although there are definitely some. But the social and teamwork benefits. The kids are learning that you can't win a game alone, that you have to show up to practice and can't just blow off a game - both things that I got from music. You need to practice, you need to commit, you need to show up, you need to work together. That teamwork forges some strong bonds and teaches a lot of responsibility. Plus the sports are teaching that you don't always win but you've gotta get off your butt and go into the next game trying just as hard anyway. Also, that you're not automatically the best thing ever and that you can learn from other people.
Luckily, the local hockey program has an absolutely fantastic culture. Soccer is pretty good but it's soccer, so cheap shots and diving is part of the game ;)
In reply to volvoclearinghouse :
Dude, you are an awesome parent and are nailing this! Enjoy these years, they go by quick.
In reply to mtn :
The interesting thing is, at least in my experience with this group, the kids that are the best- the top 3 or 4 that I mentioned above- are the ones who show up, every time, every practice, early, and work their hardest. They do every jumping jack, run every lap, participate in every drill. They're never sick, or hurt, or have something come up. They're dedicated. They don't feel that practise is beneath them.
Sounds like a good learning experience for everyone involved. Hope the kid learns to like the game & his skills keep improving. Taking a leadership role in kids sports can be a thankless task. Parents can be terrible. Complaining about playing time & unable to objectively understand their kid's capabilities & development needs.
A few things i've seen in my own youth sports experience: the teams's coach can help set the tone, at least w/your own parents. Many kids get embarrassed if their parents are yelling at referees/umpires. If your parents are positive and respectful, it'll make the other team's parents look more ridiculous...and may even result in a few more calls going your way. Everyone should agree to a code of conduct at the start of the season. Reward good behavior. Kids that show up at practice & follow instructions start. Kids that can hit, but goof around will sit the first 3 innings, as an example. Not possible w/9 players, but maybe next year. Also consider a player development meeting w/kids and parents. Understand & document their goals at start of season & talk about progress at the end of season.
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