Coaching & the Brookline Mariners!

In today's athletic world, there are far more leagues for you son or daughter to pick in their chosen sports professional level. There is also many more kids around these days (and let's face it, more countries are involved as well) making it that much tougher for those with that dream to reach a professional level.

And as a parent, you have those visions of your child hitting that game winning home run, scoring the last second soccer goal, or making the game saving tackle. It is fun to dream and many of us live our own past dreams through our kids' current endeavors. When my son was first born, I swore to myself that I was not going to coach or be that overbearing parent pushing him towards things he did not want to do.

But, due to the fact that my son was very shy when he was younger, I volunteered to help out just to try and get him involved and it worked. I did not really think too much about what kind of impact it would have on me though. I was doing it for him, but who knew that his shyness would vanish, and a new passion for me would develop?

Coaching has become very important to me. I have learned far more things from these kids than I can ever teach them. Getting to know these kids and their families has caused many new friendships that I really treasure. It does take a lot of time and effort to do what a coach does and often results in time away from your other family members.

I am lucky to have a very supportive wife, and two younger girls that soon will be involved in athletics as well. It is a volunteer position, and while you are volunteering your time, you are also taking away time with them as well, which often gets overlooked and for that I thank my family for doing whatever it takes for me to be able to this. 

For the Brookline Rookie Boy Mariners, we finished our season last night. We do not keep track of wins and losses in this league. It is still instructional and this is their first introduction into a "competitive" environment where outs are kept track of and you can score no more than four runs in an inning.

Try and tell these kids that we do not worry about winning and losing is like telling my oldest daughter she can't play with her baby dolls and has to play with her brothers Legos. Not gonna happen! They know, they pay attention, they are the ones out there trying their best and want to be the best they can be. We only play six innings, so in the beginning of the season most of the scores were 24-22, 22-20, etc., lots of runs, little defense.

It is really amazing to see how fast the kids learned though. Let's face it, it is tough to remember and pay attention in baseball. So when a ball gets a hit to you, you have to know how many men are on base, where to throw the ball, "Do i have to tag the runner or just the base?" how many outs are there. There are many variables you now have to process in less than a second and that is very tough especially when you never had to do it before. By the end of the season all the scores were down to around 12 or 13 runs per game andthat is almost in half!! An amazing accomplishment by all these kids!

This past season was by far the most enjoyable for me. As a coach, your rewards come in the form of smiles and laughter. Seeing a kid strike out or miss a ground ball, talking to them about what they can try and do better, and then seeing their expression when get that hit or throw out that runner is the reason why we do this.  

Watching the kids cheer on their teammates when they bat, or congratulate them when they score a run is verification of a job well done. I am very proud of my kids and the rest of the Brookline Rookie Boys for a fantastic season. I will mention their names below and also let you know that I will be helping out the Rookie Boys Tournament Team and will be updating you all on how we make out.

2011 Brookline Rookie Boys Mariners

• Mason Baylis
• Joe Casadei
• Jagur McClelland
• Chris Hattal
• Ryan Magee
• Alex Sulpizio
• Jordan Penot
• Morey Averill
• Arric Cunningham
• Nick Ford
• Sean McCallum
• Sean O'Brien