Rodd's ramblings: Coaching is about a lot more than winning

The last few weeks have been more than a bit of a whirlwind.

As an assistant coach with the Cloquet softball team, I had a chance to be part of something special with the team picking up a Section 7AAA championship — in the most incredible of ways — and then heading down to the Minnesota State softball tournament in Mankato where Cloquet finished third.

This isn’t a column about coaches, but more so about all that coaches face and must do in order to achieve great things. Unfortunately, there are also things that all of us coaches do wrong — because we are human — and wish we could have done differently. I don’t know one coach worth their salt who feels they haven’t made mistakes. I am not talking about X’s and O’s — rather, about how they communicated with someone, how they wish they had handled a situation differently, and how they learned from those mistakes.

The ones I am concerned about are the people who are only in it for the winning, instead of teaching the kids proper technique and teaching them about the game.

I recently discussed this topic with a Twin Cities area parent who described a terrible situation with a coach and their 8-year-old child. The coach yells and continually berates his young players.

The parent asked me what I would do in that situation. It’s pretty simple to me: At this age, children have no clue how the game is played or what they are supposed to do. To have someone yelling at them instead of teaching them how to play the game is absurd. A child that age should be playing the game to be on the field with friends and simply enjoying the experience. The coaches should be teaching them the game and encouraging them to keep trying. To make a child cry — which is what happened in this case — is sad. That child may never play again, and the other children who saw it happen will become jaded.

So, how do you handle that situation?

I feel a bit like Dear Abby here, but here’s my take:

If a coach were screaming and demeaning a child, especially at that age, I would go to the bench and call the coach over, and ask in private if they felt it appropriate to be screaming at someone who is not even in the second grade yet and has never played the game before. I would ask, what are they really upset about? Do they believe it is appropriate to hurt a child mentally? I would then ask if they realize that the young person’s parents and grandparents are in the crowd, and how they will deal with their wrath after the game. And then, I would ask why they would think they should ever coach a child again.

This is not what coaching is about. This is completely over the top and an example of someone who shouldn’t coach.

In Cloquet, almost every coach reads a book about transactional versus transformational coaching. Transactional coaching focuses on actions, while transformational coaching focuses on the person. It makes for fantastic reading. It puts things in perspective.

“Inside Out Coaching,” by Joe Ehrmann, is another treasure of a book that all people interested in coaching should read.

If you have ever coached, you should give it a shot. If you know someone who is interested in becoming a coach someday, have them pick up a copy. It is worth it.

WKLK radio personality Kerry Rodd writes sports for the Pine Knot News and can often be found coaching softball.