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MANAGERS & COACHES Tee Ball managers and coaches are not professionals. Typically, they are somewhat reluctant volunteers who give in to the opportunity to coach their children while the stakes are fairly low. They discover along the way that they have signed on to a huge responsibility and they're expected to have at least some sort of clue about the game.
Where Do
They Find My eldest son played Tee Ball two years before I began coaching the game and I had absolutely no idea what it took to try to bring a team together. I watched every practice and every game I could, but still had no real appreciation for how his coach got his job or how he went about his business. I became a Tee Ball manager and coach the same way a lot of people do - I told someone that it would be neat to coach my kid some day - I must have said it one too many times to one too many people. I received a phone call shortly before the season began and was asked to manage a team that had some problems with managers and coaches in the past. I hesitated because my work schedule was so rigorous and it meant having my eldest son change teams in his last year of Tee Ball. I agreed to take the job and found out that I was left with only three players from the previous season. That didn't really bother me too much until I saw what all of the other teams were bringing along. I had to build a team of 13 players practically from scratch and I wasn't sure how to begin. Fortunately, the park's Tee Ball Commissioner, the man who had asked me to manage, was more than helpful. He managed a team of his own and was very generous with advice on how to practice and what to practice on. Unfortunately, I'm sure I missed three-quarters of what he had to say because it was so foreign to me. The things I did follow were very difficult to put into practice because I didn't really have a core of player and coaching experience to build upon. I asked every parent on the team to volunteer as much as they could and tried to find three parents to serve as full-time coaches. I was lucky enough to find some great help. Almost anyone you can talk into coaching tee ball has at least played some kind of ball before. However, very few will have ever had prior coaching experience. Coaching is much different than playing and having been a good player is no assurance that you will be a good coach. A coach must possess certain qualities. Now, I choose the word "qualities" carefully because so many coaches simply have "characteristics." A coach has to be a good teacher, he has to be patient, he has to be confident and decisive, he has to be nurturing when his players get hurt or make mistakes, and he has to be able to get as much as he can out of his players without going too far. Managers don't have to look for coaches that fit this description, but they do need to find people who will be willing and able to adopt these qualities and adapt to the environment the manager sets. If they're lucky, as I was, their coaches will be good because the parents of the kids on their team are good. Coaches, remember that your assistant coaches will probably know much less about the game than you do. They're parents just like you. You have to work very hard to develop in your coaches an appreciation and consensus for your goals for the team and the strategies for achieving them. Regardless of what they do or don't know about the game, it's very important that they respect the manager's position. There is no way a team will achieve its best when the coaching staff is at odds with itself. There are hundreds of ways to coach a team; assistant coaches must recognize this and hitch their wagons to the team that the manager brings, providing meaningful and discrete advice and dissent as they go. Since assistant coaches are normally new to tee ball coaching, managers often have to help them learn how to coach. One good way to break a coach in and get him into the flow of working with players is to practice base running with him coaching a base. It can be very frustrating for him to try to get a 5-year old player to understand when to slide, or when to run through 1st base, or take two steps on a fly ball. Coaches quickly get over their reluctance to speak up when the runners don't execute their instructions the way they want them to. What's Their Job? The manager is the single point of contact between the team and local park officials. Most of the time, the manager also assumes the role as the head coach. Many parks aren't funded or staffed sufficiently to keep teams from having to raise funds to keep the park in business, so there might be obligations that the team needs to meet such as concession duty, score keeping, fund-raising, field preparation, and more that the manager has to coordinate. The manager simply coordinates these efforts and counts on the participation of the players' parents - with their cooperation; he can devote more time to his actual coaching duties.
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