Top Two Coaching Tips

Lessons for Little League, and for life...

Jun 09, 2026

Now that Little League seasons are in full swing, let’s talk a little baseball…

I count it a blessing that my parents got me into sports early. I played them all, and from a very early age, I was drawn to baseball, never too far from a glove and a ball. My interest in playing increased in Little League, then through high school, and eventually, I was fortunate to play in college. Even better, I now have kids of my own who are interested in the game. Over the years, I’ve coached them all, doing my best to pay it forward, to pass on the joys of the game and the many life lessons it teaches.

A while back, I saw a post on LinkedIn from a guy who took on a spring challenge of coaching his son’s Little League team for the first time. He asked if anyone else was coaching and if they had any advice. I rarely respond to comment bait, but if there is a subject where my opinions match my experience…it’s baseball. With twenty years of playing and almost twenty years of coaching, I’ve been around the game nearly my entire life. Naturally, I have lots of opinions about how the game should be played…and how it should be coached.

Here is what I shared on his post:

I coach every spring...it’s the best! You are going to love it!
My main tip...fun is FUNdamentals. The better you get at the game the more fun the game gets. I see too many youth coaches overly focused on situations and scrimmages when the kids just need reps with the basics to learn how to play. You don’t have to be a drill sergeant, you can make the drills fun, but the focus should be on fundamentals. Ultimately, that’s what makes the game fun. The loudest cheers will come when a kid makes a play in the field. How do you increase the number of times they make that play? Reps.
One more tip...as a “pitching guy”, sometimes I call time out and run out to the mound just to say, “Hey bud, this is so cool. Isn’t this so cool? You’re on the mound pitching. Every play starts with the ball in your hand. That’s so cool! Let’s just pause for a second and soak that in. All right, that’s all I got, let’s get back to work. Trust your stuff. I’m so proud of you!” And then run back to the dugout. I promise you...that kid will have a little extra hop in their step, and you might have a little tear of joy in your eye.
Little League is the best...we get to do our part to help keep it that way!

Those were my top-of-mind, top two coaching tips. And yet, both tips are things I think about all the time. So, let’s break them down…

The first tip is a reframe of an old saying that the first rule of youth sports is to have fun. Yes, we want to have fun. Of course, we do. Baseball is a game. It’s a ton of fun. And for many kids, Little League is the last time they’ll ever play it. This isn’t a 10-year boot camp for the MLB draft. Well, I suppose some of the worst Little League coaches think it is, but it’s not. Baseball is fun. However, we need a better perspective of what “have fun” means. Many poor coaches never really define it. So, I did my best to help this new coach do that. Fun is focusing on FUNdamentals and learning how to play the game…which then makes the game more fun. And then, win or lose, grab ice cream with your kid after the game…that’s also fun!

A few years ago, I found a guy online who emphasized the same thing about the importance of practice reps. He shared a warmup drill I liked and said he was “trying to touch on all individual defensive skills with maximum efficiency and reps.” He shared the sketch outline below, which I’ve printed and used many times. It works. The goal is to isolate and work on the fundamentals of defense. Throw the ball hard, throw the ball for accuracy, field a ground ball hit to you, catch a ball thrown to you, and catch a pop fly hit to you. If you do those five things over and over again, you will start to do them well. Practice makes progress. And if you do those things well in a game…well, the game gets a lot more fun.

This “warm-up” drill only takes 20-25 minutes. 2-3 players per station, 4-5 minutes per rotation, equals a LOT of reps. It’s a fast drill. It keeps things moving, active, and focused on the fundamental skills of playing the game. You could spend 20 minutes trying to explain drop third strikes or first-and-third situations that you might see a couple of times a game. Or you could weave in drills like this to make sure your players get more reps in the parts of the game they’ll need every play. Reps increase their confidence to make those plays (and bounce back from mistakes) on their own. You can even make a fun competition out of it and track the catches or the accurate throws they make.

This is just one of many examples of how to prepare for practice. There are times in practice to highlight situations, but the key to any activity or drill is movement and reps. Find more ways to increase movement and reps. If the lines are too long (more than 3 kids), break them up and add a rotation. This goes for any youth league sport. There should not be 6 kids waiting their turn to kick a soccer ball or shoot a basketball. The goal of practice is skill development. You don’t get a lot of time in practice, so you have to maximize the reps. They can practice standing in lines when they shake hands after the game…or at the concession stand.

The second tip is all about slowing down and soaking up the experience. There is a bit of forced nostalgia wrapped in this tip, as most coaches played Little League once (and would love to do it again). But there is also a bit of positive psychology mixed in. Kids (and coaches) tend to get way too serious, way too fast. There is no reason to get worked up over 10U baseball. Or any level for that matter. Slow down, soak up the scene, take a deep breath, and trust your stuff. Baseball is a beautiful sport. We need to take every moment we can to notice that…both when we practice and when we play in the game.

This mindset hit home for me when my 13-year-old son pitched for the first time at age 9. To my surprise, he got two pretty quick outs. It was the coolest thing to watch. I snapped out of a dreamlike state and hollered out, “Time, blue!” and ran out to the mound. I had to slow things down, partly because I couldn’t believe I was experiencing it. We all have “pinch me” moments in life that stand out, and this was one for me. It seemed like just yesterday I was the young boy on the mound. Now I was standing back on the mound with my young boy watching him do the very same thing. I wanted him to know how cool I thought that was. And I had hoped he’d slow down enough to see how cool it was, too. He had pitched to me in the yard since he was 4. Now he finally got the chance to do it in a game. As his coach, I could run out there and ensure we captured this magical moment together. I’ll never forget it.

While on the mound, I said something very close to what I shared above, and he nodded in agreement. I added, “I love you, bud,” and then I ran off. I sat back down, fighting back the tears in my eyes, and watched him strike out the next batter. His fist pump and smile said it all; he was officially a pitcher.

That moment, and many others coaching my kids, have superseded the joy I had in my own play. I recently retold this story to a group of nationally ranked college baseball players. The goal of the talk was to help them identify what they love in life, what they are good at, and how they might lean into those things in their future beyond baseball. I told that coaching story to remind them to soak up the amazing opportunity they have to play this wonderful game. I also wanted to plant the seed that one day, when they coach their kids, it may be something cooler than what they were experiencing right now. I think a few believed me…but many just stared at me like I was crazy. As I stared back at them, it felt like a real-life Marty McFly moment. I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it, I thought. I was back from the future, trying to prepare them for an adventure they hadn’t yet lived. One day, their playing days will end…and their kids will love their passion for the game, their patience, and their positive encouragement as they teach them to play.

I paused for a moment and thought about all of this. Just trust me, I tried to convey to them with my smile. Their faces stared back at me with a look that said, Future me? Come on, AP! I’m just trying to make it to Friday…

Whether they believed my prediction or not, it didn’t really matter. I remind my kids, my players, and my students all the time to “trust their stuff.” Their “stuff” is the skills they have worked hard to develop to play their sport and to excel at school. And what I trust is that the same process of skill development and work ethic they’ve learned from that stuff will create “new stuff” they’ll use (and trust) later in life. That’s what matters. One pitch, one step, one opportunity at a time…

Which leads me to the last line of my note, a bonus tip if you will. “Little League is the best…we get to do our part to help keep it that way!” Protecting the game is everyone’s job, but it starts first and foremost with the coaches (and parents). And from what I see week after week, we’ve got work to do. Most games I coach, I see another coach, a parent, or a player do or say something that leads me to believe we need more education on the “Unwritten Rules of Baseball”.

There is a fine line here that we need to recognize. It can get ugly when we try to live vicariously through our kids…when we want more than they do. The rules start to bend as we focus more on the outcome of the game than on the process of learning the game. If the written rules win or lose games, I’d argue it’s the unwritten rules that win or lose kids. I take to heart what my favorite college professor, Coach McGuire, always said: the goal of coaching is to “win kids with sport,” not the other way around.

To explain this in more detail, I started writing a book on the “Unwritten Rules of Little League Baseball,” but honestly, I’ll probably never finish it. It ended up feeling more like a snarky pocket guide than an actual book. That said, I will likely continue to gather a running list of problems (or annoyances) that I see in youth league baseball. There are plenty out there. I’m sure you’ve seen the worst examples in your social media feed. Maybe someday I’ll attempt to compile them all. There are a few books already out there (like The Baseball Codes) that attempt to highlight these unwritten rules, which have been around at the Big League level since the game started. I have a hunch, though, that it would be fun (and helpful) to put something in print that focused on the Little League level. For the most part, all the rules come down to honoring the game and respecting your opponent.

But…what does this mean?

This isn’t just about youth sports. There is a reason I said, “Both tips are things I think about all the time.” There are life lessons in these tips that are “bigger than baseball”…things I have to remind myself of all the time.

The lesson behind the first tip is about learning to love the process of learning in whatever you set out to accomplish. Most goals we set take time and patience to reach. We spend a lot more time in the process of learning a thing (practice) than in the actual performance of that thing (the game). It takes more time to prepare a nice meal than it does to eat it. More time to train for a race than to run it. More time is spent writing a book than reading it. The harder the goal, the more work it takes to enjoy the fruits of that labor. Except the “fruit” or the fun isn’t just in accomplishing a goal. Once you start to enjoy the process of learning, it makes the journey to your accomplishments more fun…and makes it more likely that your goals will get done. Practice the FUNdamentals of whatever it is you strive to learn. Keep moving! The more reps you take, the better you get, the more fun you’ll have along the way. Without that process, there is no performance. If you only love the game, the practice will likely fade over time…

The lesson behind the second tip is to be intentional about slowing down and being present. However, this tip is often paired with big things (like waterfalls, vacations, or having babies), but I’m talking about the little things. Have you ever taken a wonder walk? Try it. Take 10 minutes and wander around a little. Force yourself to look around, to find and focus on things you hadn’t noticed before. There are more amazing things all around us than we can fully comprehend. So why do we miss it? I know I’m at times as guilty as anyone. Life is fleeting. The days are long and the seasons are short. But if we slow down and soak in the moments, we notice the nuances. It’s so easy to get riled up about everything wrong (like stop lights and dropped third strikes). What if we spent more time giving thanks for all that’s right (like watermelon slices and safe slides into second)? Each new day is full of gifts to be grateful for, surprises to spur our curiosity, and opportunities to do more good…

And finally, the lesson behind the bonus tip. Like the movement to protect youth sports (which is gaining momentum), we must protect what matters most to us. That is, our faith, our family, our freedom…whatever it is you hold most dear. It’s our duty to keep what we love front and center. To keep the main thing the main thing, even while doing other things. Otherwise, life (and baseball) has a way of distracting us from our values and our goals. It’s good to remember that we represent the name on the front and the back of our jersey. And the one imprinted upon our heart. In all our endeavors, how we show up matters. Our words and our actions impact others.

This season marks the start of my dad's 30th year as the announcer for my hometown high school baseball team. His care for the game (and for others) is evident in his consistent commitment to the team. He creates catchy nicknames, he curates classic tunes, and he invents spontaneous snack deals to keep the concession stand busy and the fans on their toes. Game after game, season after season, year after year, he keeps showing up. Every game, the routine is mostly the same. He climbs the wooden stairs to his perch above home plate. He sets down his worn-out trusty leather bag and nestles into his chair. He gets the lineup and preps the score sheet he’ll later give to the player of the game. He practices the less familiar opposing names and cues up the national anthem. He adjusts the oscillating fan to help keep others in the press box cool. He makes sure his upgraded hands-free headset is placed securely on his ball cap. The mic goes live. He greets the crowd. The teams line up. The national anthem plays. Then, for 30 years and counting, in front of countless players, parents, and fans present over the years, he announces:

“Play ball, have fun, love your mother!”

If I had to sum up my thoughts on baseball and my opinions on coaching, I think my dad’s legendary quip says it best: Play ball. Have fun. Love your mother.

That’s the title of the book I want in every Little League coach’s back pocket.

And, as it should be, it’s more than that…it’s sound advice for all to live by.

It’s an outlook on life, aimed at working hard, playing hard, and paying it forward.

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