My kids are 9 and 7 – boy and girl. Both have played Ball since the age of 6. My son is an average player and athlete, however by daughter is a gifted athlete and exceptional player for her age. She plays 10U and is the starting pitcher.

Since the beginning I have helped on both teams as an official assistant coach. It was the best I could do with my job commitment and level of travel. Recently and strategically I moved into a new role to get off the road as I have been traveling extensively for the past 15 years, and it was getting a little old.

This has gifted me the opportunity for several things, and allowed me the opportunity to move into the head coach role for both my son’s baseball team, and my daughter’s softball team.

Coaching a kid’s team IMHO is an extreme example of OYS. You have to be on point with team communications, schedules, practice agendas, league communications. On top of that you have to manage 10-12 kids, their parents, the expectations of the parents (who sit and look at their phones all practice and game) who think their special snowflake kid that can’t catch a ball should play 1st base. All of this requires a frame of steel. If the parents (or worse) the kids detect any cracks in your coaching abilities, or if you come across as weak or non-confident then they will shit test you into an early grave.

Coaching a kid’s team gives you the stage to really shine if you have the right mindset and capabilities. You get to show off your athletic and leadership abilities to a group of kids and parents. It allows you to hone some of our most talked about topics here (Shit Tests, AA, AM, etc.)

Our kids need strong role models in their lives and I have found coaching is a great way to do that. /u/TheFamilyAlpha talks about it in some of his posts, but I wanted to expand on the topic a little and share my observations after a season of head coaching.

Some interesting statistics:

On my softball team, I have 12 girls. The primary contact for 10 of the girls is the mom, leaving 2 girls with dads as the primary contact including me for my daughter. For 6 of the girls I have no contact information at all for the Father.

On my baseball team, I have 13 boys. The primary contact for 9 of them is the mom, leaving 4 boys with dads as the primary contact including me for my son. For 7 of the boys I have no contact information at all for the Father.

My practice nights are Monday field, and Wednesday batting. Nearly every Wednesday at batting I have witnessed a low-key argument between mom/dad where one appears to be dropping the kid off, the other parent picking them up – I assume this is due to some sort of visitation schedule. Not sure, I am not divorced.

For my Softball team, myself and my wife do the main coaching with one other mom who played college ball. No Dads help with softball. My sons team, is a little different as I do have two dads who help, and do a good job for which I am thankful for. My wife is the team mom for baseball so she still helps out.

Moving away from the parents, I want to talk about my observations with the kids as this is what my main focus really is. I will start with the boys.

The boys on my team are 8+9 year olds. Most have played for a few seasons and have decent abilities. I have two gifted boys on my team, and a few that still struggle with some of the basic concepts. The boys excel at running, throwing and catching. There is a clear top 20% of boys that have the mental capacity to understand the dynamics of the game. They are in better control of their emotions, attention span and verbal comprehension. These are the boys who have a father that either coaches or is an assistant coach (my team or another), or a father in the stands. I can see a marked improvement in the attitude of my boys when a father is present, even if he is sitting in the stands just observing. For the remainder of the boys, it is not that they are bad or acting out, but I have to manage them in a far different capacity than the boys with a father present, or my girls on the softball team regardless of the parent present.

I do not have an explanation for this phenomenon other than maybe these boys lacking a father figure in the daily lives makes them less likely to listen to, and bond with another father figure who is in their presence acting as a leader. Maybe they are used to making mom happy and are not as worried about making a father figure happy, perhaps the parent is putting them in front of a screen so they have attention issues…who knows. All I know is I can see a clear difference even in 8/9 year olds, which only leads into development issues later in life.

The girls on my team are between 7-9 year olds. The contrast between girls and boys at this age, and with my sample size is astounding. The girls have a far higher mental capacity for the foundations of the game (if/then statements) than the boys. I can put the girls in their positions, hit a ball to 3rd base and my girls in all positions know where to go and what to do. With the boys, they just stand and watch the 3rd baseman field the ball. The right fielder is not running in to back up 1st, etc. like my girls do. I run these drills all the time, and I see the same behavior in other boy’s teams, so it is not me and my coaching.

My girls are shit testing machines at this age. If you want to practice AA/AM then you need to coach a girls’ softball team, you will be an expert in no time. They shit test me, they shit test each other, there is a constant battle for coach’s attention. When we all go into a huddle and put our hands in for our team cheer there is always at least 2-3 girls who fight for their hand to be on the top, where there is no such behavior from the boys.

My girls are excellent listeners, and they follow my lead extremely well. I can see that they want to “impress coach” or do a good job and they take far more pride in when I give them praise than when other team mates, or even parents do when they do a good job. My boys enjoy the roar of the crowd far more than any specific praise from any one individual.

When my girls get flustered it goes from 0 -> 100 and back down to 0 is a matter of minutes if not seconds. When one of my girls has a breakdown, it is very easy to get her to spin back into the positive with some AA, AM or other technique. I never try to fix their problem in that moment, and my only focus is fixing the girls feelz and getting her back on the field. With my boys, when they melt down it can take 10+ minutes sometimes to get them to re-focus and get their head back in the game. I can see them analyzing and breaking down their mistakes in their head, and they get hung up on it.

Rounding out, I wanted to come back to the parent’s really quick. The vast majority of the time it is the mom in the stands, or with the kid at practice. For my girls, I very rarely hear any chants from the parents when we are at practice as their noses are buried in the phones. However, the boys are quite a bit different as I will get moms and dads who will yell at the boys to “hustle, or man up, or keep your eye on the ball” during practice. I have a couple moms who I have had to pull aside and give a pep talk to as their banter from the bleachers would actually cause their son to have a small meltdown on the field derailing his practice. I have had to institute with my baseball team a “only coaches talk” policy during practice. I even had one of these moms walk out onto my field and try to coach her son over me. Let’s just say that didn’t go well for her.

The baseball moms in particular have a far different attitude than my softball moms, or perhaps it is that is just shows more since it is boys on the field vs. girls. I can detect the frustration in my baseball mom’s voices and attitudes with their boys, and it is clear to me who is divorced, or has a beta dad at home. The moms are always nice and respectful to me, and quite frankly are happy as all get out to see me (baseball and softball) but the view they push down onto their young men is quite sad.

My suspicion is that both sets of moms have this issue to some degree, but it only manifests itself with the baseball team since they are venting their personal frustrations on their son’s due to themselves having a lack of a male authority/leader in their own lives so they try to make their sons be a man. The softball moms have no need to do that to their daughters, so there is far less of that in that crowd.

In summary, all this post offers up is observations and points of reference for the things we talk about here. OYS, lift, lead, and be a role model for the next generation of kids. Men/Boys and Women/Girls are vastly different regardless of what SJW’s would want us to believe. They need to be managed differently, spoken to differently and when you can manage 12 girls on a ball field, driving your ship at home and getting laid by your wife 4+ times a week should be a natural thing.

Thanks for reading.