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I am the coach of the local single A little league (10 & 11 year olds) baseball team. We have had a good year so far, posting a record of 6-3 (while defeating every other team in our league). That being said, I feel that our record is better than our team's performance, given some lucky bounces and clutch hitting.
So here is the current situation: We have one more game remaining in the regular season. If we win, we automatically have to move up to the AA baseball tournament. In it, I would suspect we would lose every game by a healthy margin. Although the competition could be good for a few of the kids on my team, most of them could end up frustrated and sour at the thought of signing up to play ball next year.
If we were to lose our final regular season game, the odds would be greater that we would stay in the A tournament, and face much closer competition and would be able to win a couple of games in the tournament. I am by no means willing to say that we would blow away the competition, as I it would be extremely difficult to win this tournament, but the kids would have more fun I suspect. It is possible that even if we lose, we could potentially still go to the AA tournament depending on what another team does in their final game.
I have all of my players available for the final game of the season (including my two pitching aces). Do you tell your team to throw the game? Why or why not?
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No way. Go out there and play just as hard as if it was the first game of the season.
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are you serious? what message is being sent to these kids by doing that? anyone who loses on purpose shouldn`t be playing in the first place :roll:
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You go out and play your best. Give it your best effort.
Sport is about the activity, not winning or losing.
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Not a chance. You don't even introduce that thought into their heads.
At that age (going only from my memory of playing little league), their performance can vary wildly from game to game. Try to win the game. Maybe they will; maybe they won't. And if you get bumped up to the better tourney, they might even surprise you there.
You're overthinking it -- just send them out on the field and let what happens happen. And kudos for stepping up and being a coach -- that's huge.
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I agree with everyone above.
It seems your main concern is the kids feelings and becoming frustrated if they lose. This isn't a bad thing to be worried about, every parent (or coach) wants the best for their kids. But........
How do you think the kids would feel if they realized what you were doing? Now instead of feeling discouraged about losing a couple games in AA, they would be even more discouraged in finding out their coach had no faith in them.........
And on the opposite end, what if they end up in AA and winning a few games?? That would completely boost their confidence in themselves and their team as well. I think its 10x more important in giving them a shot in doing that over worrying about them losing........
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Who's to say you will get blown out by the other teams in AA, there may not be that big of a difference between the two levels. I haven't seen the AA teams and maybe you have. Anyway at that age it should be about fun an not winning and losing. If you are a good coach you are spending the time to teach that type us stuff.
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I find it hard to believe the thought of tanking this final game even crept into your head.
Granted, I'm a hyper-competitive person....but not only would I be hell-bent winning that last regular season game, I'd already be planting seeds of "underdog inspiration" in that team.
In the world of sports competition (and especially in baseball), I find nothing to be as motivating, exciting, and pressure-free as entering a tournament where you are a perceived underdog and not expected to advance. Kids, even moreso than mature, experienced players can be easily rallied to embrace that underdog role. Run with it!
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I have very fond memories of playing minor league baseball as a kid. Nobody ever told me to tank a game and I suspect there isn't a single kid on the universe playing minor league ball who wants to hear that from his coach. Besides, playing in a level above actually excited me. I got the call to join a team that was playing at a higher level of ball and I loved the challenge of it. I'm sure the kids just wanna play ball, no matter who it's against.
BTW, kudos to you for volunteering your time to be a coach. I'm forever grateful for the amount of time my father and the other coaches put into coaching me as a kid, in hockey and basketball.
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approach every game as if it were your last
it appears you had your mind made up from the get go
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I'll give you all an update just to wrap up this thread. We ended up winning our last regular season game, and building momentum for the tournament. It turns out that even if we would have lost that game, that we still would have been bumped up to AA. Today was our AA tournament and we played back-to-back games against towns that are 15X larger than ours in population. In our first game, we kept it really close, but could not come up with another run in the last inning, so we lost 7-6. In the second game, we actually held the lead for the first half of the game. The opposition managed to tie up the game, so we went to extra innings and gave up one run in the second extra inning, making the final score 8-9. Overall the kids had a great time, and I have no regrets in the way that things turned out. The kids even soaked me with water after the game! I believe that we made a statement in the tournament, and gave the kids some excellent competition in order to become better ball players. That is all I could ask for.
