The Youth Baseball Coach

Level: 1

Purpose:  To teach your players the proper glove position when catching a ball.

Equipment: Glove and tennis balls (or similar soft-type ball that has a little weight to it)

Description:  Glove positioning when receiving a ball is very important.  The earlier you can teach this, the safer and more successful your players will be.  Most young players tend to receive a ball that is above their waist with the fingers pointed down and the palm of the glove on top.  This can be dangerous as the ball can skip off the glove and hit the player.  The proper way to catch a ball above the waist is to rotate the glove so that the fingers are pointing toward the sky.

I've been asked, what are the most common coaching mistakes.  I've done my best to compile a list.  While some might argue with me about these, their order, or the list itself.  I really believe that these are valid and important.  So, let me know what you think.  Here is a list of some of the most common coaching mistakes-

BIO

Website Owner: Larry Miljas

Baseball Experience 

Major League Baseball: None

Minor League Baseball: None 

College Baseball: None 

High School Baseball: One year at Mountain Empire High School

Little League: Seven years of Little League baseball.

Experience

Coaching: Five Seasons of coaching little league from t-ball through minors. 

One Season of Girls competitive softball 10U.  Went undefeated with a 28-0 record. Including two regional tournament victories.

Six Years Teaching Black Belt in Training for Candal's Martial Arts (Pa Kua and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu) Children and Adult classes.

Profession: Computer Programmer and Web Designer.

Personal: Married for 17 years with one daughter (11) and three sons (9, 4, 2). 

Education: BA in Communications.

As you can see, besides little league and a mildly successful season in High School, I am far from a professional baseball player.  I loved to play baseball, but was never good enough to go beyond high school.  The great thing is, that you can be a coach even if you never played in the Big Leagues.  As a matter of fact, you can coach even if you've never played baseball.  This is a little more difficult, but it can be done.  This site and my new book is here to help you. 

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Why I started this site

I'm all about the kids.  Actually I'm just a big kid at heart.  I love to be around youth and I've found that one way I can give back is to be a youth baseball coach.  This was natural due to my love of baseball and my love for kids.  Also, I believe a large part of who I am today, came from those seven years of little league baseball that I participated in.  I grew up without a father and my mom worked a couple jobs to make ends meet.  I really received a lot of life lessons from baseball and little league. 

By teaching martial arts and coaching youth baseball, I have a chance to give hopefully more than I have received.  Baseball by its nature is a beautiful game.  A game that can take you to the pinnacles of victory and the agony of defeat.  Within youth baseball, we have the opportunity to teach so many principles that transcend the game.  I hope that this site and my book help other coaches do that.  I'm not an expert on coaching, but I have a lot of experience dealing with youth and little league and I want to share what I've learned and hopefully learn from you as well.  I've become the coach that I am today, by studying, watching and assisting other "great coaches".

Please feel free to contact me about anything you would like to see, questions you might have or life in general.  We are all on a great ride in this lifetime, there is not much of a greater goal than to teach and instill in today's youth, the principles of success, hard work, value and worth.

Definitely not.  Now, I'm not going to lie and say it does not help.  Obviously, if you have played the game before, you have some knowledge of the rules and basics of the game.  That being said, you can learn everything you need to be a Great Youth Baseball Coach.  It just takes a little more work to get up to speed.  Also, at the T-Ball and Minor levels of baseball, fundamentals are pretty much all you will be teaching.  The more advanced skills are learned at the older ages.  Just teach the basics of baseball, as weill as, the important things like hard work, good attitudes, dealing with failure and success appropriately and you will be a great coach.