COLORADO COACH- FALL 2018 FROM THE SPORT PRESIDENTS New drills, more coaches on court time to practice the drills? Please let me know. I would also like to ask you all for suggestions for coaches and teachers you think deserve awards. Nominate yourself, as well! We work so hard to help our kids earn awards, but often overlook ourselves and our hardworking and deserving peers. There are several awards to be had, ones for longevity of coaching, ones for well deserving teacher/coaches, and many others. Please go to colohsca.org and look under the Awards & Forms tab. I am also the chair for the Community Development Committee with CTA, (Colorado Tennis Association), and we have some grant money to help out with new windscreens, program needs, say you are considering running a summer camp, for instance, and other court and equipment needs. We can get our hands on lots of good used tennis balls to start up your season or for use in your ball machine. As always, remember if you need racquets for your kids, we have the Racquets For All program; and if you have racquets collected to donate, we will get them in good shape for kids thinking they would like to start playing this great sport. If you are a new coach, please get on our Colorado Tennis Coaches Facebook page! Find it at Colorado High School Tennis Coaches’ Association and get ready to post when you need matches, help with rules, parents, kids, anything. Thanks for reading, and let me know if there is anything I am able to help you with! Diane~ 720-841-7230 dianewolv07@gmail.com SOFTBALL President Mark Roberts The Intentional Walk As a coach, have you ever made a decision to do something but then eased off the gas pedal a little bit because you weren’t sure how others would perceive your unpopular decision? It is my belief that coaches will sacrifice popularity to do what they believe is the right thing to do and that’s the way it should be. I had an incident this softball season where one of our pitchers asked me to “please not request an intentional walk” when she was pitching. So, I tried to explain to her why coaches sometime intentionally walk batters in a game. And, although my pitcher is a great kid, and one of my all-time favorite players, my explanation just wasn’t getting through to her. So in our first game this season, I intentionally walked the opposing team’s lead-off batter (not exactly a great coaching strategy). Nobody (except the opposing coach and the umpires) knew what was going on. I then sent my Assistant Coach out to visit with our pitcher. My Assistant Coach passed on the message to trust her coaches’ decision making, and not to second guess her coaches. I watched my pitcher nod her head in acknowledgement so, the message was clearly sent and received. My Assistant Coach also told our pitcher that I was watching her to see how she would react to my unpopular decision. Of course, my whole angle was that if she was going to melt down because of my coaching actions, I would rather her melt down now instead of melting down during post-season play (when I may have to actually intentionally walk a batter). The beauty of the story, is that after the game was over, my pitcher’s parents found out in the parking lot what I had purposely done. They were so excited about the fact that I was teaching their daughter a valuable lesson that they started slapping “high fives” in the parking lot! Later that night, I received a text message from my pitcher and her parents. In her parent’s text, they thanked me for teaching their daughter a valuable lesson by actually coaching her. They said it would be a lesson that she will never forget. My pitcher apologized and thanked me for the lesson as well. In conclusion, I took a risk by intentionally walking the opposing team’s lead-off hitter. I took a risk by getting into my pitcher’s head which could have caused an on the spot melt down. I took a risk too in not knowing how my pitcher’s parents were going to react to such a coaching move. And maybe, I was lucky to have such good parents that would support me in this case, but all in all, it was a small risk that I was willing to take for the betterment of the team. My advice to all coaches making tough coaching decisions is to keep your foot on the gas pedal. Don’t’ look into your rear view mirror to check and see how your coaching decisions are being perceived. After all, part of coaching is knowing when to pull the right strings at the right time. Even though we intentionally walked the lead-off hitter, two pitches later, the