Rockland Baseball Training and Instruction
QUESTIONS ANSWERED...

How do you choose the right hitting instructor?

Answer...

One of the most important things about finding baseball hitting instructors is being able to identify the principles of a good hitting instructor. This all starts with evaluating a hitting instructor once you find one, and then deciding if the chemistry is there between them and your kid. This video aims to help you identify what a good baseball hitting instructor is compared to a bad baseball hitting instructor. By the end of this video, you should be able to understand how to find a good baseball hitting instructor, and get started in helping your child improve their baseball skills.

https://youtu.be/dFMltYTe9Jk

How do I choose a travel baseball team?

Answer...

#1 Location
How far are you willing to drive? Remember, most travel ball teams practice 2 to 3 times per week and have 1 to 4 games on the weekends. If you are driving an hour or more to and from practices and games, it can become very unpleasant, very quickly. For some families, the team and the advanced coaching, is worth the extra time spent in the car but for most people it will become irritating at the very least. Not to mention it can have potential adverse effects in your family dynamics and/or spousal dynamics – does your other child resent the time you give to the baseball child? Are you not able to spend quality time with your spouse because you are beat after driving an hour each way? What about your personal health? Are you sacrificing your exercise to sit in the car? Are you not able to cook dinner because you can’t get to the store or have time to make anything before homework and getting the kids to bed? I can’t answer these questions for you anymore than anyone else – I just want to give you things to consider to ensure you make the best decision when choosing a travel ball team for your kid. Make sure to seriously consider the location of the team because it might be better to play for a less competitive travel team that is closer to home.

#2 Skill Level
Skill level of the players is another important component to consider when choosing which travel ball team is best for your family. In most cases, if you have a talented young baseball player on your hands, you will want to put them on the best possible team you can find. The best teams often have the best coaches and playing with superior players daily will make everyone on the field better. But what good is playing with the best if your son or daughter sits the bench? You need to read your child’s personality. Will they be driven by seeing better players getting innings over them or will they become discouraged? They may have moments of maturity but we are still talking about young people that are finding themselves. There is definitely a happy medium here…players need game repetitions and the pressure that comes with it. It can't only come from practice.

#3 Opportunity to Play
The next component to consider when picking a travel ball team is whether your son or daughter will have an opportunity to play. Opportunity! Not a guarantee from the coach that they will play every inning of every game - players still need to earn their position and earn their at bats. The players that improve the fastest are the ones that feel like they have something to prove and are willing to work harder than everyone else to earn their playing time but as we alluded to above, you have to read your child correctly to know their personality.

Even though I truly believe that players don’t improve their skills by playing in games, we all know that having the opportunity to show off your skills in the game is a must – and a VERY strong motivator to practice hard and put in the extra time at home working on their skills. Parents do not enjoy going to youth baseball games and watching other players play, nor will players be motivated to focus on improving their skills in practice if they never get a chance to showcase their skills in the game. This portion gets often overlooked by parents. Weigh this in because it affects your happiness.

#4 Coaching
I know that finding a close to home travel team with skilled players and the opportunity for playing time is tempting to put on the forefront when choosing a travel team, but the coach is probably the most important of them all. Youth players will benefit or suffer more from the person that is coaching them than any other single factor. Make sure to find a coach that is not only committed to developing their player’s baseball skills but someone who takes pride in developing them as people too. Negative coaches with short tempers that do not know how to communicate with young people need to be avoided at all costs. If you have the luxury of time and forethought, watch the coach run practice a couple of times to get a feel for how they operate and work with the kids – I know this is easier said than done as we all have lives, but if you can, it can be really educational.

The best coaches put a lot of hours planning their practices to focus on what their players need to work on to get better. They are extremely organized and the practices are run smoothly with very little downtime. These types of coaches focus on mechanics and deconstruct tough skills into smaller and more manageable parts. They make corrections immediately during practice and never let incorrect mechanics slide. They often use “tough love” with their player, which most players respect and benefit from but they also understand that all players are different and need to be coached differently at times – when called for they support, praise, challenge or coax. The best coaches never sacrifice player development for a win-at-all-cost approach.

Research the coach before committing to a travel team. Look into their playing and coaching background, ask players that have played under them, talk with other families on the team and talk to families that have moved on – either due to age or because they chose a different path. Don’t be afraid to ask them questions or attend a game or practice to watch them in action.

#5 Teammates and Families
Your family and specifically your player will spend an incredible amount of time with the families and players on the travel ball team you choose. Ideally, you want to choose a team that is close and enjoys hanging out with each other on and off the field. The more positive and supportive the people involved, the better the travel ball experience will be for your family. Good teammates and families can increase players’ confidence and allow them to focus more on baseball development instead of the people around them. Bad teammates and families will provoke poor team chemistry and distract the players from focusing on what they need to do to become a better baseball player – it can make players self-conscience instead of self-confident and erode their development. I highly suggest going to a few games and sitting in the stands as a spectator prior to committing to any travel ball team – you will have a much better understanding of the environment you are about to join.