Prepared
This week I will talk about being prepared. We define this in sport as being willing and
able to do something; made ready in advance.
The outcome is “You are Ready”!
It’s funny how things work themselves out as I sit here
conjuring up something to share, I thought of yesterday and it plays right into
this post.
I am a baseball coach and I coach the classes in
Twinsburg. Yesterday we had our hit,
run, score class running and as we are winding down I wanted to have a solid
practice with them to review positions and situations. After about 4 rounds of infield and every
single catch or throw not being a success, I took a deep breath and asked my
boys to come together.
Hold there, the problem that I observed was that they were
happy and complacent with being average or in this case below average. The problem is as a coach I was not demanding
perfection which in turn is not preparing them
for their team or season.
So I looked at them and bluntly asked them if they were
happy with being average? I obviously
got NO’s. I told them that to continue
to get better and be a contributor and leader on their teams that they needed
to prepare better and demand more of
themselves. I can coach till I’m blue in
the face but if you don’t have internal motivation then we may as well go home
and not waste our time.
With a little work I sent them back out to the diamond and
we agreed that we would not play the game at the end until we had perfection on
every catch and throw at every position.
I know your wondering how long that took. I positively reinforced them and continued to
stress being perfect and demanding it internally not externally. One of the kids barely messed up a catch and
bobbled it and when the play was over I asked are you happy with that? His answer was “NO give me another
coach.” It definitely took a high level
of concentration and focus but we achieved our goal and I am very confident
that they all had taken another step forward at being prepared
for their season.
Thanks,
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