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Baseball has the potential to be one of the greatest team sports for a son or daughter to play or it can be just another life lesson in extreme patience! The person largely in control of exactly where the experience lands on the spectrum is the man or woman with the clip board, the coach. The coach's first goal must be to make the game fun for the ALL of the kids on the team, and to teach them the skills they will need to move to the next level. Secondly, you must find a way to keep peace with the parents, listening to any feedback they have on their child's performance. That, I believe, is the key to success as a baseball coach in any division. The wins and losses will depend on how interested the coach keeps the kids in baseball and how many skills that the coach can get them to replicate successfully during the game.

A good relationship with the parents starts with consideration of the amount of time and effort it takes parents to get children ready, homework completed, cleats purchased, and the rest of the daily tasks completed. By the time they flying into the Little League parking lot, they just want to know it is not a waste of time, and that there son or daughter will get something out of the experience. As the coach, that is your number one priority, give the children and the parents their money's worth. The children are all there for different reasons, and it is important to find their motivations to give them a good experience.

I have found the reasons children have for signing up to play baseball in the first place are varied. The key to making each child's season a special one is to find out the motivations behind the decision to play. Some have been swinging a Louisville Slugger at baseballs since they were two, and signing up to play baseball was just a formality. There is no question in these boys or girls mind that they want to play baseball. They usually will not need any motivation to practice and will find all of baseball exciting. Baseball tends to be a slow sport at times, and these type kids play right through those spots. These kids are easy, and because of that, they usually get most of the coach's attention. Use their focus to your advantage and push them into more advanced skills.

Another type is the child that has seen other kids playing baseball, and they start to get an itch to explore it. It is obviously best if these kids come into T-ball first because the instruction is very basic for young kids that are new to the sport. If

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