Day 1 Today, I traveled to Toronto for the 2018 National Coaches Clinic put on by the Toronto Blue Jays Baseball Academy and the Jays Care organization. Due to working for the Boys & Girls Club of Central Vancouver Island (BGCCVI) as the Jays Care Coordinator, I had the opportunity to apply for this clinic back in December 2017. Fortunately, I was accepted, and the excitement began! The BGCCVI receives grant money from Jays Care to run baseball camps for our kids and youth during the spring and summer. My position as the Jays Care Coordinator allows me to plan, develop, and run these baseball camps for the twelve different Boys & Girls Club sites that we have in Central Vancouver Island. This is a seasonal position as these camps only occur in the Spring and Summer months. The opportunity to attend this clinic is a tremendous one due to be being a baseball fanatic, and because I am continuously trying to enhance the baseball camps that we put on for the kids and youth that we serve. My flight left from Nanaimo at 6:00 AM and I took a connecting flight in Calgary that then led me to Toronto. This was my first time in Toronto, so I was very excited! I couldn’t wait to see the city and to be at the Rogers Centre – the field that I have been watching my favourite team play on for the last twenty years of my life. Upon arrival in Toronto, I checked in at my hotel and proceeded to walk to the stadium for tonight’s Coaches Social. This ice breaker event was a way for all of us coaches attending the clinic to see the field and meet with other coaches from across Canada. We were only there for a couple hours, but it was still great to see Rogers Centre and to take in it’s beauty for the first time in my life. Once I got back to the hotel, I knew that sleeping would be hard tonight as I was very anxious to get back to the field tomorrow and officially start the clinic. Day 2 I woke up early this morning, so I could get to the field as soon as possible. Upon arriving at the stadium, I was instantly sitting in the crowd and listening to former professional baseball player, Homer Bush, talk to us coaches about the importance of teaching base running to our youth players. Part way through being mesmerized by what Mr. Bush had to say, I saw a group walking on the field towards a section that was behind center field. I soon realized that this was my Jays Care group and I was escorted to meet with the other Jays Care coaches attending this clinic. “Great start…” I thought to myself. I met with my group in what is called the Green Room. This room looked like a mini clubhouse and we were later informed by our Jays Care clinic leaders that it is a conference room. The two leaders of this clinic were wonderful. They were extremely energetic, shared all their coaching secrets and successes, and did a tremendous job at leading this coaches clinic. We started today by introducing ourselves and sharing which programs we lead. Most of the other 21 coaches (22 of us in total) lead what’s called Challenger Programs in their cities. The Challenger Program is a baseball program that is put on for children and youth with disabilities. Many of their participants have autism and range on the scale greatly from low functioning to very high functioning. I had never heard about the Challenger Program before, so it was a great experience for me to collaborate with these coaches and learn about the type of programs they run and how they make them effective for their participants. Other coaches were like me and came from the Rookie League Program. Some even worked at other Boys & Girls Clubs around the country; so, it was also very beneficial to be able to share successes and challenges with those coaches as we have very similar coaching roles. Today’s instruction consisted mainly of our two leaders introducing us to games and baseball activities that many of us had never heard of or done with our participants. I’ve been around baseball for a long time and I thought that I’ve seen all the activities that baseball had to offer for youth; boy was I ever wrong. These games were great! I came into this clinic with the goal of learning more inclusive games to bring back to my program which would result in participation and enjoyment for all of my Rookie League players, no matter what their age or skill level. Consider this goal achieved. My favourite game that we learned today is called Rock-Paper-Scissors Baseball. In this game, each participant starts at home plate and finds a partner to play rock-paper-scissors with. The partner that wins the game then gets to proceed to first base where they will play against another partner – after each win, they move up to the next base. The partner that loses the game stays at the base they are at and plays again until they win and can move up to the next base. The goal of the game is to cross home plate as many times as possible – the player who scores at home the most by the end of this 2-3-minute timed game wins. This is an awesome way to teach young players how to properly run the bases. Other highlights of today included sharing games that we like to play and things that we do with our individual programs. This was an excellent collaborating experience as I was again able to pick up a few games and ideas that I will be implementing with my program. One idea that I loved was providing more mementos for the kids at the end of the program each summer. What I have done in the years past was give each participant a blue jays shirt and hat which is always a big hit (no pun intended). However, other coaches at this clinic had even better ideas. One that I really liked was making sure to take pictures of the players at each camp that is offered and forming a yearbook at the end of the summer for each kid to take home from our Rookie League. The only issues I see with this is funding, as the Boys & Girls Club is a non-profit organization. Another challenge would be making sure that parents have signed off on the photo release forms so that there are no issues with taking these pictures of the participants. One way I could get around the money issue is by just providing a yearbook to each of the individual clubs that take part in our camps. By doing it this way, we avoid having to provide yearbooks for all 100+ participants and dealing with that expense, and the kids still get to see their successes in a yearbook that is provided to their individual club. Throughout the day, we got to listen to former professional players talk about the importance of coaching. This was incredibly beneficial, and I don’t think that my hand could’ve written notes any faster. Our first presenter, Ernie Whitt, is the coach of Canada’s National Team. Mr. Whitt talked a lot about building team culture and the importance of players knowing that their coach cares for them and will support them no matter what. Our second presenter was the Toronto Blue Jays President, Mark Shapiro. Mr. Shapiro preached more on team culture and how it is vital that coaches build relationships and prove to their players that they love and care for them. Mr. Shapiro went on to say that if a coach is successful in building relationships with each of his or her players, the team results will handle itself (not unlike my credo regarding the teacher’s role with our students). He went on to talk about how baseball builds life skills for our young players. Mr. Shapiro talked about how a great baseball player fails at hitting seven out of ten times. This is a success rate of 30%. A player needs to be mentally tough and resilient to believe that they are great after failing 70% of the time. He then went on to talk about how this helps build growth mindset in players as they learn to handle failure, build character, and persevere – amazing. The next presenter we had was another former professional baseball player, Chris Robinson. Since retiring, Mr. Robinson has focused on coaching youth players. He went on to introduce his four concepts of coaching module to us in his presentation. The first being the importance of a gradual coaching approach; meaning that we can’t just dive into drills and lessons that our players aren’t ready for yet. Go slowly and make sure that players are meeting each objective’s needs before moving on. Second, the act of setting goals that are difficult, but achievable. Don’t dismiss this goal if it’s not being accomplished, continue to persevere with your players and complete the goal. Next is to get away from specialization with our young players. Mr. Robinson encouraged all of us to develop players in multiple positions, making them better overall athletes. Lastly, he said that as coaches, we need to learn how to sit back and allow players to learn and adjust on their own at times. We can’t always be there to hold their hand through life, so we should be using baseball as an opportunity to teach independence and problem solving. At the end of today, we got to go onto the field and get our pictures taken. We were given a form in which we put our name, hometown, and a reason to why we’re an Unstoppable Coach. We then got individual pictures of us taken on the field and in the dugouts as we held these forms up. I even got to play catch on the field! What an unbelievable day. Day 3 Today’s third and final day of this clinic was a lot more condensed than yesterday. We again met at the field and kicked off today’s session listening to Homer Bush talk about hitting. After this presentation, we were led to the Green Room by our Jays Care Leaders. We started by reviewing some of the things we learned from yesterday and which activities and games we plan to bring back to our programs. After the review, we were split into two groups as some of us went to the Blue Jays batting cage to learn and play more baseball games, while the other group stayed back in the Green Room for a different activity.
We then switched groups and went back to the Green Room. The activity that our leader planned for this session was very fun and extremely beneficial. He laid out random baseball equipment in the middle of the floor and had us partnered up with another coach. We then would race to the equipment, one partner at a time, to pick up one item. After thirty seconds, we were finished grabbing equipment and then were given the job of creating a game with the equipment we had. The catch to this activity was that he then gave us two cards – one with a baseball related skill, and another being a life skill. My partner and I received groundballs and leadership. We ended up creating a game called Hit the Blue Jay which was a big hit with our fellow coaches and led to us winning a prize due to being voted with creating the best game! Our prize was no small feat either… a Toronto Blue Jays jersey! The rules to Hit the Blue Jay are as follows: First Progression: - Player starts at a cone and runs to their glove only 20 feet away - Player then picks up glove and gets ready to receive a groundball from the coach - After picking up the ground ball, player throws the ball to a sign with the blue jay logo on it - If player hits the sign, they receive one point - If player hits the blue jay on the sign, they receive three points - Player or team with most points after each participant has had the chance to play… wins Second Progression: - Same rules as above - The modification is moving the sign back to make for a more difficult throw for the player - Other modification could be rolling the ground ball to either side of the player to make for a more difficult play Third (last) Progression: - Same rules as above - Before player can run to their glove, he or she must put their forehead on the bat and do the dizzy bat modification – meaning they spin in a circle 3-5 times (number depending on skill level and age) while crouched over with forehead placed on top of the baseball bat - Player then runs to glove, fields groundball, and throws at the sign - Now, if player hits the sign, they receive 3 points - If they hit the blue jay, they receive 5 points Leadership Aspect: - Players are asked and encouraged after each round to share how they succeeded in this game - This allows coaches to sit back so that players can help coach other players and develop leadership skills through sharing and instruction - Some examples of what players might say is: setting their feet up to make an accurate throw, pointing their glove at the target as an aiming tool, etc. I really enjoyed that activity because it forced us to use creativity and problem solving. I haven’t always been very creative, so this was a great way for me to tap into that skill and collaborate with my partner in creating an awesome game that I will be utilizing in my program this spring and summer. After this activity, we had a pizza lunch followed by a tour of the Toronto Blue Jays player clubhouse. This was a dream come true – to see what a professional baseball clubhouse consists of and to be able to take pictures of this experience as a memento was the cherry on top. We then met back in the Green Room and reflected on this tremendous experience. One of the ways we reflected was by doing the Rose & a Thorn activity. This sharing game has the exact same concept of doing two stars and a wish and I plan to also include this assessment method in my future camps this year as well. I believe that it will help me assess what is working and what is not in our Rookie League camps. Going to this clinic allowed me to pursue two of my passions – baseball and working with kids. Even though we didn’t work with any youth players directly, I came away from this clinic as a better, more informed coach that can’t wait to lead Rookie League for the Boys & Girls Club of Central Vancouver Island this year!
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AuthorHi there, my name is Tyler Armstrong. I am a Child & Youth Care Worker and I am studying at VIU to become an Elementary Teacher. Archives
September 2018
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