When writing love letters, X’s and O’s represents hugs and kisses. They are symbols of love. To be an effective coach, you must love your players. You must love them with action and positive words. You must love them with patience and understanding. Those same X’s and O’s represents strategy in baseball and as we all know, teaching baseball isn’t easy. If we coach our players with love, they will always win.
Coaching youth sports has become loosely defined over the years to mean an adult taking charge of a team. The good coaches win all the games and the bad coaches can’t seem to get a break.
With L.E.A.D., coaching occurs on and off the field. It is year-round commitment for our year-round program.
Young men will be young men. Before they can become men, they have to learn the importance of being punctual. They have to really understand what it means to respect others. They have to learn how to dress for success and understand etiquettes. Most of these lessons will be learned through mistakes made. As a child, I was taught right from wrong and learned from my own mistakes but it wasn’t until I was older that I was coached on how to be a responsible man. I still need constant coaching.
Coaching requires patience, passion, and an understanding of people and their daily struggles. For me to make an impact on a young man, I just need him to be willing to learn from his mistakes. Like life, baseball is full of ups and downs and requires usable skills to compete. As the founder of L.E.A.D. and as a coach, I must also realize that a lot of mistakes that my Ambassadors make are due to mistakes that I’m making in turns of not holding them accountable.
Coaching is about meeting young men where they are and using a holistic approach to improving him as a superior citizen and superior athlete. This is what the L.E.A.D. coaches do to best help the young men that we serve.
