The other week I was waiting for my first lesson to come in when my friend and fellow coach Dave Doerhoffer sat down next to me sighing and shaking his head. Dave is an assistant coach at Vernon Hills High School (as well as a private hitting instructor).

As part of that role Dave, along with head coach Jan Pauly, helps oversee instruction for the Stingers travel teams that feed VHHS. On that day his head shaking had to do with the complicated instruction one of the coaches for a 10U team was giving to his players.

I won’t go into details to spare anyone embarrassment, but the gist of it was that while what was being instructed was technically correct for an older player, it was too much for a younger player who just needs the basics to absorb.

This is something that’s probably more common than most coaches and parents realize. Coaches go to a coaching clinic featuring D1 college coaches explaining how they teach this technical aspect (such as footwork at first base) or handle that situation (such as runners on first and third).

Then the travel coaches, all fired up as they ought to be, come back and try to apply those principles to their younglings. Usually with disastrous results. Players get confused, or don’t yet have the skills or experience to apply what’s being taught, and what should be good outcomes become bad ones instead.

Here’s where coaches can learn something from the way school subjects are taught. In language arts, math, science, etc., the early grades start with the very basics, allow their students to learn those, then build on that knowledge when they are ready and able to take the next step.

Take math, for example, Teaches don’t try to teach differential calculus or advanced algebra in first grade. (Thank goodness because I would have never made it out of first grade.)

They start with simple addition and subtraction, then move to multiplication and division. They continue to build on those skills little by little through multiple grades until they can handle more complex and more abstract mathematical principles.

It’s a slow build over time, not just jumping right to the difficult stuff because it’s cool or will make the teacher look good.

The same goes for vocabulary. Young students start with simple words they use and hear every day (except for those words), then learn more complex ones as their basic understanding grows.

Otherwise all that will happen is the teachers will obfuscate the intention in a torrent of enigmatic gibberish until any learning is diffused and the results are ineffectual. So there.

Coaches first need to put themselves into the shoes of their players, evaluate what those players know (if anything) about fastpitch softball, and work from there. Teaching them how to execute a trick play for first and third when those players can barely throw and catch just doesn’t seem like a good use of time or resources.

By the way, this doesn’t just apply to the very young, i.e., 8U, 10U, or 12U players. Ask some college coaches and they will probably tell you stories about good players who lacked basic knowledge on some aspects of the game, such as how to tag up on a fly ball and when you can run. (It’s when the ball is first touched, not when it’s caught.)

When I was coaching teams I learned the hard way not to assume your players know ANYTHING you THINK they ought to know. If you take the stance that if you didn’t teach it directly to them they don’t know it, no matter what they age, you will avoid some ugly surprises just when you need those least.

The bottom line is as a coach you need to look at what your players know and can do, then introduce new concepts that fit within those capabilities. Your players will learn the game better, in a more logical fashion, and you’ll avoid the preventable mistakes that keep us all up at night.

School photo by Ksenia Chernaya on Pexels.com