2013 Cape Cod Baseball League Season: The New Challenges of Summer Baseball

Thru my almost 40 years of coaching, I have certainly learned thru working with student-athletes I have the wonderful opportunity to help others reach their Dreams & Goals. I try to stress "Self-Motivation; Hard Work on a Daily basis; TEAM always comes 1st; and begin each day asking What CAN I DO to help OTHERS today." As coaches, head or assistants, we must plan each day to reach out and help student-athletes, during the school year or summer baseball, and encourage the athletes to embrace these CORE principles or similar principles from other coaches. In the 2013 Cape Cod Baseball League Season, our coaching staff had to focus and then re-focus more than ever to try and ensure we accomplished these tasks. The turnover of players in summer baseball has increased dramatically. This is due to the lack of a following thru with a commitment made to an organization like the Cotuit Kettleers. Too many student-athletes, with consent from their parents, are allowing their children to opt out of that commitment at different stages during the summer. Many times the excuses to leave are based on nothing but the athlete wanting to go home and be lazy. This has made seeing consistent success both for the individual player and the team in summer baseball, on and off the field, a much larger and more difficult challenge now than 10-15 years ago. Coaches must build a TEAM that cares greatly about one another. But, if players are constantly leaving that becomes much more difficult to accomplish. Players should arrive immediately after completion of their spring season and stay til the final pitch of the summer season. But, due to this new youth travel ball mentality, that is show up and display my skills a few days for scouts then shut it down, coaches now have greater challenges. In the summer of 2013 our team had too much turnover. However, the young men who hung in there, finished the daily work to be done to polish their skills, stayed with their commitment, cared about one another, and came together as a TEAM, reaped the reward of a Cape Cod League Championship! The coaching staff is thankful for those young men and hope this was another step in reaching their dreams and goals.