I’m back coaching my travel ball team for the summer, and we’ve already played our first three tournaments. The first two were for warmup, and we won the whole thing both times. Our most recent tournament, however, had tougher competition and more college coaches present. We struggled. My girls weren’t having the success they wanted both hitting and in the field, and it took us until the last day of the three-day tournament to even win a game.
Our coaching dynamic usually has me as the good cop, as I look at it as a “from one girl to another” type of thing when relaying a message. However, I do have my limits. As we continued to struggle, my girls became increasingly more aggravated and started to show that aggravation on the field. I gave them a couple of warnings, but in the last game, I let them have it. I don’t raise my voice often, but when I do they know it’s serious. The funny thing is, after I dropped the good cop act for a moment, the girls completely turned it around. We were losing that game and they came back and won. More importantly, they started playing for each other as opposed to being selfish and moping whenever their own success didn’t turn out as they wanted it to.