![]() “I advise my travel players to stick out the whole season,” Ani Ramos, a former Jackals bullpen catcher and assistant coach who runs a catching academy, told Pinckney. What lessons are you teaching your child by immediately pulling him or her from the team? You can learn something about yourself – and your sport – by handling the situation. Your child is someday going to have many teachers, bosses and (hopefully) coaches throughout his or her life. But everyone is going to have a poor coach from time to time, especially at the youth levels, where many coaches lack experience and knowhow. Stick it out: Coaches come and goĪ parent’s first reaction to poor coaching might be to complain or remove a child from the situation. (Note: In some instances, I have also added in perspective from my own experiences.)ĬOACH STEVE: How a Michigan football coach navigated a career-crushing injury and gave his parents strength 1. They might even keep you from quitting the team. ![]() ![]() The tips offer insight young athletes and their parents can take to heart. “It’s really just a matter of educating yourself and, unfortunately, the ones who do need to be educating themselves aren’t.”īelow are some unconventional lessons from Pinckney, now a senior at Montclair State, and individuals he has interviewed about how you can keep the fire burning for your sport. “Even though I’m younger and I don’t have as much experience as a coach, I’ve just educated myself on the subject and I think a lot of young players and parents and youth coaches should do the same,” he says. Within its pages are lessons for young athletes from current and former professional players, coaches, educators and others. His parents didn’t pressure him in that way, and he had all of those stories players shared with him from some of his early days with the Jackals.Ĭombining his interviews with others he conducted, he published “Passion Prevails: Baseball’s Top Performers Advise Youth Players on Maximizing Their Experience” in June. When Billy got to college, there were even players on his club team at Montclair State University who shared their stories about overbearing coaches, or of parents who hovered over their results and success on the field.īilly had more perspective. According to a poll from the National Alliance for Youth Sports conducted in recent years, about 7 of 10 kids stop playing sports by age 13 because they’re not fun anymore. They’re confident in themselves.”īilly felt like quitting. whereas at the pro level, they really don’t need to do that. I think a lot of those coaches at the younger levels just want to be able to show the parents that they know what they’re talking about by yelling at kids. "Sometimes at the younger levels and high school, inexperience and the egos come into play. They know what it feels like to get released or get hurt and deal with those situations. You had coaches who either played at the big-league level or played in the minor leagues and they know the grind. “I faced those situations but, at the same time, I was being taught lessons from the professional players who I work with who played in the big leagues, who played in Double-A and Triple-A. ![]() “I didn’t enjoy the game anymore,” Pinckney says. It was a lot different from what Pinckney felt when he got to high school, where his baseball coaches called out players – including himself – for failure or implored them not to screw up under pressure. These players in the unaffiliated minor leagues ground through the harshest of slumps while fighting for their professional lives, a painful yet joyful experience everyone seemed to understand. Communication is so important in baseball, as it is in life. Other times, he quietly observed how they communicated with each other. Pinckney did pregame reports, promoted the Jackals through social media and even helped the manager find players. The team later asked him to create content for its new videoboard. “I had the access I just used my phone and began to interview the players.” “It was no problem for me,” Pinckney, now 21, tells USA TODAY Sports. In 2015, he wanted to learn more about the guys he observed in the dugout, so he started talking to them. He asked if they needed a batboy and was hired the next season. He wrote a letter, with the help of his father, to the front office of the New Jersey Jackals. He was about 11 when he looked for a way to get closer to the players on his local minor league team. Billy Pinckney plays baseball, yes, but there is something about just being around the game that has always felt right to him.
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