What's really important!

Last week, as I was rushing to finish work and get Ryan off to his three times per week sports performance class in Athens, I got a little slap in the face about what is really important. I'm fortunate enough to have a job that allows me to work from home, so I'm in my office just inside the front door when Ryan makes it home from school each day. Of course I always greet him and ask him how his day went and if he has any homework. On this day he said he had a good day and that he had homework in "multiple classes". I didn't pay much attention or think anything of it and just started back to working on whatever it was I was doing at the time.

Fast Forward a little over an hour later and we are hopping into the truck to head to the performance class, when as we were pulling out of the neighborhood I look in my rearview mirror and notice Ryan plugging away on his school issued Chromebook. I said "why did you bring that, are you playing a game?" His reply (for whatever reason) hit me hard. He said, "no dad, I'm working on my social studies presentation". I was shocked a little, as this hadn't happened before where he was doing homework on the 20 minute drive to performance, but that shock quickly turned to pride. I was truly proud of him for recognizing that he had several homework items to complete that evening in addition to the training he was going to do and of course knowing I would still make him get to bed on time.

I quickly took a picture of him working away (as we were stopped at a stop light of course I want to be a safe driver too) and I posted the picture on Facebook to brag on my son for having his priorities straight even when sometimes we as sports parents and coaches don't always put these things first.

The Facebook post was 100% about me bragging on him, but that is not the point of this entry today. I only shared the story to give context of where this is coming from and to also say and openly admit that this is not a lecture from someone who claims to be perfect and making sure these things are given the right amount of attention, but to instead admit that I too have failed as a parent and coach at what I am emphasizing at times.

Parents and coaches, I get it! I really do! Things absolutely get crazy. I'll just use our player as an example of how crazy things can get. This week alone here is Ryan's sports and extracurricular activities schedule. Our travel baseball team played a Sunday one day tournament in Atlanta this week. We left the house at 7:00am and returned home at 8:45pm. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this week, he has sports performance for an hour and 15 minutes each night and it's another 20 min drive each way to and from so two hours total. He is also playing on the local Little League team and they practiced Monday night from 7:30-9:00pm and on Tuesday night from 6:30-8:00pm. Thankfully, that practice is only a five minute drive. He also has private fielding and hitting lessons at UGA on Saturday for an hour. Oh, and we must not forget that we have to throw a midweek bullpen in there somewhere to make sure we are working on form and keeping his arm strong (probably Thursday since that's the only day we don't have something already scheduled). And then just because he/we wanted him to have a little more on his plate he has joined the "Future Teachers Club" at his school that is on Wednesday mornings from 7:15-7:45pm. To say the least, he's busy!!!!

I also understand that some people will say it's too much. Kids just need to be kids etc. I can personally make an argument that those things are just being a kid and I can for sure justify, at least in my mind, why each and every one of those things are important for him to do. That is a debate for another time.

What's really important that we not lose sight of is the academic piece to all of these sports activities. See the real truth is, if your child isn't taking care of his or her school work then none of the hard work they are putting into baseball or softball or any sport matters. Of course, we all know that once the kids start playing middle school or high school athletics they are required to maintain a passing score to be eligible to play. A passing score, yeah great, I mean of course we all want and hopefully expect our child to make at least a passing score in each of their classes in 6th-12th grades. Come on, it's really not that hard, it's high school for goodness sake. Show up, do your homework, and even be just a good guesser on the test and you should at least earn a D if not a C.

That's not what I'm talking about here though. I'm not talking about just passing. What I'm talking about is, us as parents and coaches, expecting the same excellence out of our STUDENT athletes as we do of them on the ballfield. Would we as parents, or especially as a coach, accept a 60% or even a 70% or 80% effort on the field or court? Of course not, and we should not accept anything less in the classroom either. Don't get me wrong, I don't think they have to make straight A's anymore than I expect my pitchers to throw strikes 100% of the time or my hitters to have a 1.000 batting average. That's not realistic, but I do expect them to push for that type of perfection and to put in the type of work needed to achieve that level of success. It should be no different in the classroom!

How important is this you might ask? As long as they are passing that's good enough isn't it? Well, no it's actually not. When we use to coach national level girls fastpitch softball, the sole reason and goal for our team was to get our kids recruited to play in college. In about 10 years of coaching at that level our staff helped 150+ kids reach their dream of playing at the college level. That is something that I am personally extremely proud of. Way more so than literally the 1,000+ coaching victories, coaching staff of the year award, and coach of the year awards that I've been fortunate enough to win. That is what all the hard work was for - helping those kids start their "real lives" at the school of their choice.

Let me explain why it's not just ok to pass. When we were coaching these teams and players and helping the 150+ kids on to the next level we literally would speak to hundreds and hundreds of coaches about these kids. Each kid had their top 10 list and their top 50 list of schools they wanted to go play for and they would reach out to these coaches to let them know their interest. Often, either myself of our recruiting coordinator, Craig Brey, would get a call, email, or text following up about these players interest. I can tell you from literally after having well over a 1,000 of these types of conversations with college coaches that they never started with "well, how good of a player is she? How often does she work on her speed and agility, who is her hitting or pitching coach? etc. etc." It simply didn't happen.

So you ask, what did you all get asked? The first question almost every single time was "what kind of kid are they?" Do they work hard? Are they coachable? Am I going to have to worry about them getting in trouble outside of the game? Without fail that was the number one thing we got asked. The second most common thing we were asked, how are their grades? Yep, that's right. Even the big NCAA Division I schools who were out to compete for national championships and trips to the College World Series were more interested in asking about their grades than how talented they were on the field. See, like high school, colleges have academic standards to be eligible to play, but they also have academic standards that have to be met just to get your student athlete in the school. Because of that fact, before a coach goes and waste two or three hours three or four different times watching a kid play to see how talented they are they want to know if they can even get them in the program first. It's easy for them to assess talent. It's what they do for a living. But what they can't do or teach is to have some kid with a 16 ACT and a 2.2 GPA how to get around the NCAA and university standards.

Those two questions became so apparent to our staff that we literally became the first travel softball team in all of North Texas to implement both academic and personal responsibility standards for every player on our team. We decided as a staff that if we were going to truly prepare our players to compete at the next level that we had to replicate the next level as much as possible.

The first thing we did was put in a minimum GPA requirement for all of our players. Each nine weeks, in season or not in season, our players had to retrieve a copy of their academic transcripts from their high school and present them to our staff to prove that they were maintaining a minimum GPA of at least 3.2. Not just passing, not even just average. We wanted to be able to assure every single college coach that might potentially want to come and watch our team that our players were putting in the work in the classroom to be EXCELLENT. They were, at minimum, above average students and that they, in all likelihood, would be meeting the university admission standards not just the NCAA minimum standards.

Without getting too technical about how college scholarships work, the other piece to this academic standards is that very very very rarely does any baseball or softball player get a "full ride" athletic scholarship. (If someone tells you they are getting a full ride athletic scholarship in baseball or softball they are HIGHLY likely to be lying to you). Depending on NCAA Division levels, schools are limited in the number of full scholarships they can provide. Those numbers, at all levels, NEVER meet the total number of players a team must carry during the season, so almost everyone has a partial athletic scholarship. This is again where the academic side becomes so important to you as a player and parent, as well as the college coach. If a college coach can help your player get an 80% academic scholarship because your players grades are very good then they can use 20% athletic scholarship (to get you to a full ride) and still have the other 80% of the athletic scholarship to target other talented players. This can be a tie breaker or even just a straight up deciding factor between your player getting to go to the school they want verses someone with less academic stature. This is why we believe that the academic standards are so important and why we demanded such exceptional work in the classroom. We also encouraged players to take the ACT and SAT test early and often so they could achieve the highest score possible for the same reasons.

The second part of our standards were the personal responsibility requirements. If you'll recall the first question a college coach asked was about what type of "kid" they were from a behavioral standpoint. One of the things that colleges do to make sure they are giving back to their communities and help teach their players to be good productive members of the community and society is community service. Therefore, as we said, we wanted to be as much like a college program as possible, so we implemented mandatory community service. Each year we selected six to eight community service projects that our players could participate in to meet their requirements. We required that they participate in at least three of the events each year. The events ranged from welcoming our troops back from Iraq and Afghanistan, to helping with an extreme home makeover project, to things that the players could do in their own how towns (we had players from north Texas, central Texas, New Mexico, and Arkansas) like starting a crayon drive where we collected tens of thousands of crayons over the years to donate to the Dallas Children's Hospital so the kids would have something to color with as they stayed to get treatments. All of this, in an effort to, again, teach our kids the value of being humble, helpful, and productive members of their communities.

I share these things with you, as coaches and sports parents who are following this blog, not to brag on what we did or what we do now. Instead I share this with you now because I had my eyes opened last week by my son who chose on his own to make his schoolwork a priority, even when I had personally forgotten to make it one. As I said in my Facebook post, I see so many parents and coaches, literally everyday, posting and bragging on their kids athletic achievements or showing their hard work at baseball practice or lessons or whatever it may be. (FYI, I'm just as guilty as the next guy) What I don't see though is parents posting photos of their kids sitting at the kitchen table at 8:30pm at night knocking out their homework after school and practice. I routinely see team Twitter and Facebook accounts talking about the MVP award their player won at the most recent tournament, but I don't see them posting about the honor roll awards 9 of the 11 players earned for the first nine weeks of school.

I challenge all of you parents who read this and all of you coaches out there who follow this, to make an extra effort, as this school year is still just getting started, to make sure you are keeping your eyes on the real prize. Make sure you are emphasizing the really important things this year. Maybe you aren't comfortable posting about it on your personal or team pages, that's up to you, but make sure you are encouraging, awarding, and demanding excellence from your kids and your players off the field as much as you are on the field!

As always, thank you for taking the time to read this entry. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to email or text me or leave a comment below. I'm always happy to help. Have a great week and good luck as many of you have officially started your fall seasons!

Do work before play!