Scarborough: Earning your spot on a team isn?t easy, and it shouldn?t be

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Scarborough: Earning your spot on a team isn’t easy, and it shouldn’t be | Softball Sales

 

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Pretty much agreed with every word in this article. The goal of keeping all your options on the table as a coach should be to strengthen the resolve and work ethic of every player on your team. Sometimes you have to shake it up a little bit to keep complacency from creeping in.

One point that keeps being brought up throughout a season is always getting in that competitive mindset to focus, while having a consistent attitude, and always giving maximum effort. Almost nothing bothers a coach more than an above average player who is inconsistent in her performance, due to their not having that competitive mindset when it's needed most.

Nowadays, more often than not, competing is a quality that is having to be taught, instead of being innate.

That's because society as a whole has been trying like hell the past 40 years or so to squash it, like it's some form of cancer. It's so much easier to just try to keep our self-esteem intact.

 

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Good article! Agree that there definitely has been a trend to an "everyone wins" society over the years ... I'm not sure it goes back 40 years, because I certainly didn't see it when I was a kid, but the last 20 for sure. I think it's driven a lot by the generation of parents for today's kids, which makes me wonder what my generation did wrong raising that generation! What makes it worse is also a trend to a sense of entitlement going on at the same time. Again, both of these are trends and generalizations ... not all parents and kids feel this way. But I definitely admit to struggling with this all as a coach ... I actually think it's easier if you coach for a very competitive organization (or school) ... more (but not all) of those kids and parents get it, and know that it has to be a competition for the team to achieve at a high level. The ones who struggle with it more are the mid-level organizations with competitive coaches who are trying to take it to the next level ... no matter how many times you tell the kids and parents that they are competing for spots and playing time and they shake their heads "yes", they only buy into it in the end if they/their kid are playing all of the time.

 

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Good article! Agree that there definitely has been a trend to an "everyone wins" society over the years ... I'm not sure it goes back 40 years, because I certainly didn't see it when I was a kid, but the last 20 for sure.

I'll bet you a dollar that the people who were our age when we were coming up said the same things about all of us. In fact I started readying the hard times/you kids are so soft guilt trip stories long before I ever had kids of my own to lay on them. Like the one about how my dad would beat us all until he passed out from the exhaustion of beating 4 of us for 16 straight hours after slaving 29 hours straight in a coal mine so that we could afford to rent the card board box that we lived in. And if he didn't think we beat each other hard enough for him after he was unable to continue he beat us all again when he got home from his next 29 hour shift.

Now I know that the 29 hours he worked plus the 16 hour beating marathon and then the 1 hour of sleep he got = a 46 hour day. The days were longer back then too, you see. That made for longer beatings, longer walks to school barefoot and naked in the snow, more time to push the car 30 miles uphill into town and then uphill 30 miles back home because we couldn't afford gas, etc, etc. These kids just don't know how good they have it....

 

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I'll bet you a dollar that the people who were our age when we were coming up said the same things about all of us. In fact I started readying the hard times/you kids are so soft guilt trip stories long before I ever had kids of my own to lay on them. Like the one about how my dad would beat us all until he passed out from the exhaustion of beating 4 of us for 16 straight hours after slaving 29 hours straight in a coal mine so that we could afford to rent the card board box that we lived in. And if he didn't think we beat each other hard enough for him after he was unable to continue he beat us all again when he got home from his next 29 hour shift.

Now I know that the 29 hours he worked plus the 16 hour beating marathon and then the 1 hour of sleep he got = a 46 hour day. The days were longer back then too, you see. That made for longer beatings, longer walks to school barefoot and naked in the snow, more time to push the car 30 miles uphill into town and then uphill 30 miles back home because we couldn't afford gas, etc, etc. These kids just don't know how good they have it....

Yikes!!!! You win...my life was easy compared to yours. Although back in 80's as a teenager no one got participitation trophy and we did play cowboys and Indians without worrying about being PC.

 

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Although back in 80's as a teenager no one got participitation trophy and we did play cowboys and Indians without worrying about being PC.

Where is it that you live? I have never met a kid in my life who told me that they were worried over any such thing.

Also, the park and rec stuff that my parents signed me up for back in ye olde times actually did give out certificates, medals, etc for participating but my kids have never been given anything for showing up.

I'm not going to make a blanket statement, but in my personal experience it's tougher now than it was then.

 

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Where is it that you live? I have never met a kid in my life who told me that they were worried over any such thing.

Also, the park and rec stuff that my parents signed me up for back in ye olde times actually did give out certificates, medals, etc for participating but my kids have never been given anything for showing up.

I'm not going to make a blanket statement, but in my personal experience it's tougher now than it was then.

its not the kids that are worried. It's the parents who doesn't want winners and losers to be distinguished. So if it's harder for your kids they must have 47 hour days

 

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its not the kids that are worried. It's the parents who doesn't want winners and losers to be distinguished. So if it's harder for your kids they must have 47 hour days

The closest thing I've seen to this is the very youngest age groups of any given sport when the kids have the motor skills of a brick and it really shouldn't matter. I'm talking about kids just out of diapers who probably shouldn't be "playing sports" anyway. If you can even call it playing sports.

Don't think the parents, and the more advanced kids for that matter, weren't keeping score in their heads though.

 

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Lovestheshortgame ... times are always changing ... yes, they changed from when our parents were kids till when we were, and then again from we were till our kids came around ... and they will keep changing. Do kids today have it tougher in some respects ... yes, they do. But with the respect to the original post, Blue Ice is 100% right that parents today are driving much different expectations than when at least when I was a kid. I am sure when I didn't make a team that there were times when my dad maybe thought I should have because he knew how much I wanted it and how hard I worked for it, but I can absolutely guarantee you that he didn't baby me about it, didn't complain to the coach, didn't tell me the coach was an idiot who didn't know what he was doing, and he sure in the heck didn't go start his own team so I could play.

 

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Here in Mayberry...Andy,Barney,Opie and Aunt B are shocked when there is a cut in roster...how will theses kids cope.