Coaching High School Baseball
Originally published at Kyle Boddy dot com. You can comment here or there.
It's official (pending paperwork): I'll be the Assistant Coach of the Roosevelt HS JVC Baseball team! Coach Nelsen will be the head coach; it's also his first year coaching baseball, but had a successful football season with his freshmen kids who seem to like him very much. Tryouts start on the 24th of February, and games start 2-3 weeks after that, so we have a lot to get done in a short period of time, especially because we have a huge turnout of freshmen this year. Everyone at the various athletic meetings is excited about this crop of athletic freshmen who have already contributed at the football level (8-1 record, best in 10 years) and wrestling level (beating local rival Ballard and getting many invites to regionals for the kids).
Having coached many of the kids previously, this should give me a leg up on scouting and analyzing the kids for promotion to JV and for cuts. My biggest concern is arm strength and endurance; getting a solid rotation from these kids with such little time to prepare (much less fix mechanical flaws) will be difficult. We'll probably have to go with split-starters on less rest to start the season so we can reduce the load any one pitcher experiences over a single game.
My role in the organization isn't clear yet, but Nelsen is probably a better «team»-oriented coach than me, so I envision the possibility of him working with infield drills and other team concepts while I work individually (or in small groups) with hitters and pitchers, including video analysis.
Exciting stuff! I can't wait to get started.