Do You Have a Perfect Season in You?
In this heartwarming baseball story, coach, author, and speaker Dan Clemens reveals the triumphs, failures, frustrations, and joys of being a youth baseball coach. His perfect season is chocked full of humor, passion, lessons learned, and wisdom to make youth baseball an enjoyable and rewarding experience for all involved.
Through his 65 personal journal entries, Clemens takes readers on a behind the scenes tour of his 12-year-old son's baseball season. 'It was perfect,' he says, 'not in terms of wins and losses.' Rather, Coach Dan's team achieved their goals of learning, competing and having fun: the three things he emphasizes that should drive youth sports.
Clemens offers many insights that will help youth coaches and their players enjoy A Perfect Season of their own:
The mantra of fun, learn, compete guides decisions on and off the field.
The difference between Responding and Reacting as a way of dealing with lackluster play, frustrating umpires, and angry parents.
Why curve balls and metal bats should be banned in the youth game.
Why kids should participate in multiple sports and learn to play several positions.
Why coaches must define success before selecting players for the team.
Why yelling at kids does little to improve performance.
'Do You Have a Perfect Season in You?' asks Clemens. 'What does perfection mean in the youth game? Is it an 18-0 record? A league championship trophy hoisted high in the air? Maybe that sounds great to adults . . . but research shows it's not what kids want.'
'A Perfect Season should be about creating a positive and productive athletic experience,' he says. 'If we do it right, we produce healthy, happy kids, ready to enter high school with experiences and fond memories to last a lifetime. That's our legacy, opportunity, and responsibility as youth coaches.'
A Perfect Season is a must-read for every youth coach . . . and shows parents what they should expect from someone they are intrusting to coach their kids.
Pencil illustrations by Janet Clemens add character and reinforce the unique journal format of this book.
Youth Coaches, Parents, and Players Must Align Priorities Current research points to a huge rift between kids who play the sport to have fun, learn, and be with friends and the priorities of coaches and parents bent on winning.
This discord means kids, parents, and coaches are often trying to achieve different things and speaking different languages.
As a result, by the age 15, nearly 80 percent of kids have quit their sport. The reasons include losing interest, not having fun, too much time, coach was a poor teacher, and too much emphasis on winning.
Between 40 and 60 million kids play organized sports in the US each year. And of the 2 to 6 million coaches leading these teams, 85 percent are dads coaching their own kids; less than 20 percent have received any type of training on how to be a coach.
Society, other coaches, and parents chant, win, win, win, and coaches dutifully load up on drills, push the kids hard for several days a week, and do whatever it takes to win. Most, however, neglect a critical part of their coaching duties: aligning their goals and priorities with what is wanted and needed by the kids they will lead.
This is a toxic combination and a recipe for disaster . . . untrained and misguided parents leading teams of impressionable kids pressured by parents, their peers, and a win-at-all-costs culture. Clemens reports that for many of us, the experience is far from perfection . . . but it doesn t have to be that way . . . and he shows us how to have A Perfect Season of our own.
A member of the National Speakers Association, Dan Clemens delights audiences with his message of fun, learn, compete and Respond vs. React in keynote presentations and workshops to youth organizations and corporations across the country.
He's a high school baseball coach and coached his own son from tee-ball through high school. He s also coached youth basketball, football, and soccer.
Less concerned with wins and losses, Dan's philosophy is that all youth sports should embody three things:
1. Kids should learn about the game, teamwork, and themselves;
2. Kids should be competitive (play at the appropriate level both as individuals and a team); and
3. Kids should, above all, have fun.
If youth coaches accomplish those three things, he says, we produce healthy, happy kids, ready to enter high school with experiences and fond memories to last a lifetime.
By day, Dan works with Fortune 500 companies, medium-sized businesses, and non-profit organizations to develop leaders and help them communicate more effectively both as individuals and organizations. A core theme in his work is helping leaders understand the key differences between Responding and Reacting he believes a leader Responds wisely to the opportunities in a situation, rather than simply Reacting to his/her narrow experience of it.
Dan was an all-state baseball player his junior and senior years of high school and was on scholarship at a Division I University before a shoulder injury ended his baseball career. He's been a softball umpire for 10 years and a basketball referee for five years. He plays competitive baseball in an adult league, has run four marathons, and climbed 50 of the 54 mountain peaks in Colorado that rise above 14,000 feet.
