Digital Dad®

End of the Softball Season

I blogged here back on March 27 about my new role as the coach of my daughter’s softball team.

She’s seven and this was her first year playing in the Bellevue East Little League. I volunteered to help and quickly realized that I was in for a full season of practices, clinics, games, schedules, and everything associated with Little League.

It was a very rewarding experience. We had a great set of kids, involved parents, and a good supportive attitude. There’s a fine line with seven to nine year olds where you want to push them to try their best and at the same time be very encouraging. We had our share of strikeouts, grounders between the legs, errant throws to first, but they were all learning experiences.

It was also a great opportunity for me to practice my patience, my empathy, and reconnect with a  game I loved to play as a kid.

A few of takeaways for me:

• Invest in a good schedule up front; I sent a doc out early with every practice and games, location and time
• Make sure parents have assignments – snacks, base coaches, practice coaches, organizing end of season parties and trophies – these all should be assigned early.
• Write out your practice drills – there are plenty of resources on the web but keep them short, well organized and diverse.
• Get to games early to get a short practice in – between the game schedules we didn’t get enough practices in. Getting to the game 30 min early gives the girls a good way to warm up with fundamentals
• Schedule your make up games as soon as the happen and don’t pile them up at the end of the season
• Have parents’ cell # on your phone
• Write out a consistent batting order and who plays what position inning to inning. Avoids arguments and pleadings. I kept the same batting order all season, so the girls got the hang of who is up next. In a more competitive league i may have switched it up a bit, but not much.
• Rotate the girls through all of the positions so they get the feel for each position. Not everyone wants to catch but some REALLY do.

At the end, I was the only one who used the Windows Live Group I created. Maybe it was the sign in, but there was no “digital community” around the team. I used it to keep master copies of the line up and stuff there.

Looking forward to next year.

Digital Softball Coach

Somehow I am now the Head Coach of my daughter's Little League Softball team. No one volunteered, I offered to help and there you go. She is seven, her first softball experience, and it’s my first experience as coach.

Things have changed from when I was in Little League. People now have email. I can send around rosters, schedules and other notifications. However, I do go "old school' at practices with a brown clipboard and real paper. Maybe I should use a tablet computer? Maybe not.

You can also now find a ton of information on softball coaching on the web. Some of my favorite links

• Michele Smith – two time Olympian softball player, lots of tips

• Marc Dagenais – drills and stuff. You can friend him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter.

Any other link suggestions?

Early on I created a Windows Live Group for the team where I keep all of the dox and the schedule for practices and games. I can also upload photos of the team in action. Yes, I could have used Cozi but i thought i would give this a go. Unfortunately I only had two parents join, maybe they didn’t want a Live ID.

There seems to be a bunch tools to help me stay organized on this and so far the kids are having fun – which is what it’s all about anyway.

Holy Cow

Another Celebrity Death Beeper notification - Phil Rizzuto died today. I remember him calling all those Yankee games when I was a kid. Heard he was quite a shortstop, too.

Speaking of the Yanks and the Scooter - tonight is another episode of The Bronx Is Burning - a good miniseries on ESPN about the 1977 Yankees.