u/ir637113

Gonna be a bit vulnerable here and ask for help. Some context: I played until I was about 11 or 12, had some frankly abusive coaches who taught zero baseball skills and had such a bad time I didn't pick up a glove or a bat for 15 years when my son started playing.

Started coaching last year as an assistant, then a manager this year and even got picked to manage our 10u all star team, which won our first district tourney in 25 ish years. Kid and I are moving up to the 12u team next year.

What I learned cosching all stars is that I don't know NEARLY as much as I thought I did from doing research and from my playing days. Long story short, I'm good on most fielding fundamentals but lacking on more advanced skills and situational playing (case in point, our state tourney was a lot of travel ball kids who beat us by baiting throws and hoping for errors and, with no experience there, my only real advice was "quit throwing the ball around and get back to the mound" 🤦‍♂️)

What would be my best move forward from here? Research, coaching clinics, taking a backseat until I can figure it all out, something else? Need to work on some skills that I'm just not familiar enough with as well as situational baseball. I feel like I've got the approach/attitude/personality pretty spot on. Any advice here is appreciated.

ETA: I also tend to fall into the camp of "you shouldn't coach what you can't actually do," so any advice on working on my own fundamentals is appreciated as well 😅

Buddy of mine has been working on putting together a slowpitch team. We were gonna put together a men's team, but the place we were gonna sign up closed registration WAY early. So we're going coed!

We've got enough men for now, but we need 3 or 4 women who want to play. Going to be playing in Vandalia, I believe it's on Friday nights. Buy in is $30.

Downloaded and setup Family Link somewhat recently and honestly I'm not a fan. Would like to switch, but first I need to remove Family Link. I have been trying for multiple weeks to find a way to stop supervision and/or delete the family group. Changed ages to above 13, above 18, waited a few days, nothing. No email about changing supervision, no option to stop supervision, nothing. From what I can tell, there is no way to stop supervision. Every google search says "just click stop supervision," but there literally is no button that says that.

Anyone have any ideas for getting this off of here without deleting google accounts that they've had for years?

Context: losers bracket, potential championship game (we have to win to force the "if needed" the next day) and my coaches are hemming and hawing about how to manage pitchers with pitch counts and rest days. Our biggest strength compared to the other team is depth of pitchers - our #4 pitcher is probably just ahead of their #2.

Offensive strategy is to keep it close against their #1 pitcher (kid is a stud), and pour it on late game.

Currently running with two ideas: either a) run our #1 and #2 guys for the bulk of the game. Then run #3 and #4 game 2 against their weaker pitchers. Or b) run #1 and #3 or #4, save #2 for game 2.

Caveat here is that with 20 pitches, there are zero days of rest. So if someone seems way off game 1, we pull them before that and bring them the next day.

We've all managed pitchers before, just not quite this exact scenario. Curious what folks think. MY thought (manager) is balls to the wall game 1 and throw EVERYTHING against them. Gotta win that first one and don't want to second guess saving someone

UPDATE: won game 1. Pitchers #1 and #4 were the ones on their game today, so I ran with those. Game 2 tomorrow, soooooo many options on pitching

Taking on a new project for my local little league (because coaching 2 teams isn't enough for me obv 🤣). We've been slowly building a really solid softball program in our little suburban little lwague (4 8u coach pitch, 2 10u kid pitch teams). One thing I noticed this season is that none of the catchers use an actual catchers mitt.

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I asked one of the coaches about it, and found out that while the lwague provides all the baseball teams 2 catchers mitts, it provides none to softball teams. So I offered to fix that 😅

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Looking to grab like 6-15 youth softball catchers mitts over the next 6 or or 8 months, get them patched up and donate to my local league. Looking to pay about $30 or less apiece hopefully and I'll cover shipping. Don't care if it needs a minor repair or new laces, I'll deal with that.

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Im already on the lookout in my usual places, but I figured I'd try here. If you've got an old mitt you need to get rid of, reach out! Age ranges from 7-10 years old

Finally time to replace my kid's CM. He's been using a Prospect/Power Close the last couple years (LL Minors, 10u). But he'll be moving to Majors (12u) next year, and I'm thinking with the kids there easily tossing around 50, it's time to step up lol.

Mostly just looking for some recommendations. My brain at that age goes to A1000, R9, GGE, Mizuno Samurai, R2Gs, or DPCMs. Maybe an older used A2000 or HOH. Just trying to make sure I'm not missing anything obvious lol. I tend to buy used and then refurb, so he tends to end up with some unique equipment lol (like he's got an A2000 with a DFS for his regular gamer)

So, what other gloves am I missing in my search? I've got about 6 months to find something, so no huge rush if it ends up being a "look for this, but they're hard to come across."

Trying to work through my AS roster, my VP and I are in a bit of a conundrum. Tournament is 6/28-7/6. I have 12 that are available, but 2 are unavailable after 7/1 due to previously scheduled vacations

The way I'm reading is that anyone on the affidavit must bat, but doesn't have to play defense. So my thought is to put the max of 14 on the affidavit, then remove the two who can't play after 7/1 if we're still in the tournament at that point (assuming "previously scheduled vacation" falls into the "other justifiable reasons" ?)

It *sounds* like the way my VP is reading it, we just put 12 names on the affidavit and amend it if someone can't be there and we need to swap someone into the lineup.

UPDATE: Got the gig 😎 thanks for the advice everyone! Apparently I have until thursday evening to set my roster and coaches so I better get on that 🤣

Context: LL Minors/10u team. The way we select AS coaches is ask for volunteers. If more than one volunteer, the board interviews the candidates and selects who they want.

Been trying to "prep" for my interview as much as possible, its just hard to figure out what kinda stuff they'll ask. Realized last minute (it's in 2 hours 😅) I could ask here.

So, for those in similar positions or who have interviewed, what kinds of questions do/did you ask or were asked of you? I'm expecting the classic "why do you want to coach AS?" Or "Walk us through your coaching philosophy," but not really sure what all they could hit me with and if nothing else I'd like to avoid a deer in the headlights look 😅😅😅

Context: Little League Minors (10u), and our Little League is run more like a rec league (mix of talent from "I'm brand new to baseball" to "I'm going to end up on a travel/select team if my parents can afford it"). [EDIT: Please stop harping on this. I'm aware that's how it is supposed to be. I'm also aware not every league runs that way, so that sentence is just there for context] It is also my first year coaching (I was an assistant last year, no other coaching experience)

My team is A LOT of 8 and 9 year olds in their first year of kid pitch, with a couple of "brand new to baseball" kids. Skills taught to this point are.... eh? 😅 so I made a call early in the season that this was going to be development - teach them how to do basic things, teach them some baseball IQ, etc.

I am having a perfect storm of kids who WANT to hit (last year was a ton of walks, this year it's a ton of Ks), and weird strike zone at this legel against teams who don't want to hit (like, it's an inch off the plate, so its a ball. LOTS of walks), and the intersection of knowledge and skill levels being mismatched. I keep telling myself trust the process, but I'm not sure that I do 🤣

In general, they *kind of* take it seriously, but its obvious it's mostly just for fun for most of them.

What's honestly killing me is that in almost every scenario, each player makes the exact right decision. They read a fly ball perfectly, they throw to the right base, the right player goes for a cutoff, etc. And then they flub the easy thing - the ball bounces out of the glove, they sail the throw over someone's head, they miss the grounder, etc.

We're sitting at 1-4 and some of the kids are getting disheartened by constant strikeouts and getting run ruled. Hell, *I* am feeling disheartened by it 😅

Do I just trust the process and believe that with reps, the skills will follow the knowledge? Do I trash the plan, start over, and get hard about executing? Something else?