12U Baseball

Question
My 12 yr old son has been playing with this team of kids for about 4 years.  They are a decent team.  This year one coach broke away from the other coaches and decided to "take the team to the next level" and brought in a few new coaches.  The coaches came on very stong in the spring trying to make it tough for the kids.  It seems they were trying to get the kids to step up their games.  The coaches did alot of yelling.  We have now gone through the spring and part of the summer season and the coaches are threatening to kick kids off the team.  The kids have responded to these coaches by kind of giving up.  They all want to play the game, but are very disgusted with the coaches.  The coach recently told the kids as they were getting up to "strike out and get the game overwith."  He also told the parents at the end of that game that it was our job to "motivate each of our kids individually" as he said "the kids are very flat!"  Do you have any tips to give our children in dealing with a bad coach and ways for the kids to stay motivated??

Answer
I think my biggest tip would be to call the league commissioner and file a complaint! There's absolutely no excuse for coaches to act like that towards 12 year olds. At that age, kids should be playing for the enjoyment and teamwork -- not to get screamed at and embarrassed. This kind of thing really gets under my skin.....not sure how a coach would expect to motivate a kid acting like that. Instead, they should be encouraging the kids and rewarding positive results. Yes, there are times when a coach has to yell at a player -- but that's mostly when the kid is being lazy or making some mental mistake as a result of not concentrating. But that should be the exception rather than the rule.

Most likely, it's the coaches who are trying to compensate for their failures of the playing years which is resulting in this kind of behavior. If it were me, I would get the parents together and go to the league to get this changed. If you don't, then these poor kids may quit baseball forever, and worse yet -- join soccer! :)

Mike F.