Well I have coached a bunch of all star teams in Little League — didn’t make it out of my district in VA so you can take my analysis with a grain of salt. I did win 2 UK national championships at the 9-10 level when we were living in England so maybe that counts for something.
So thoughts on the games this weekend. Japan lost on 4 errors all related to bunt defense. Curacao wasn’t hitting but give them credit for figuring out bunt defense was an achilles heel for Japan and they just bunted five times in a row and scored four runs. You might say Japan lost the game and Curacao didn’t win, but I disagree. They found a weakness and exploited it. Now the question is how do you prepare for that — you can bet Japan did bunt defense 1000’s of times. They said these guys worked 6 hours a day on Saturday and Sunday. It just showed how hard it is to simulate the pressure of a big stage in practice. I played saxophone through high school and college and I was always amazed at the whole difference of practicing a hard piece and then showing up on stage all yourself and maybe a piano player and being able to deal with the pressure. So hard to simulate in practice. You just have to do it a few times and then you get better. These poor teams don’t get to play over and over again in a world series. If you watch MLB you’ll see teams get to a world series and lose, but the next year they win. I should chase the stats on that but feel like I’ve seen it. The coaches the players just get the hang of it and after a while the pressure doesn’t faze them. These little guys and girls just don’t get that chance so have some pity on them when you see them make errors. And if you’re in your own practices note that when a team does a great job in practice but falls apart in a game. See what you can do to simulate game pressure. I try it with every drill — as in HYE EVERYONE if the WHOLE TEAM catches the ball on this line drill (see machine gun as one of my favorites) then we are DONE. So if one kid drops the ball we all go around again. This puts tremendous pressure on whoever is last in line and they often drop the ball. So I talk to them and say it’s OK — you are LEARNING how to deal with pressure.
Game 2 yesterday — Nevada vs Ohio. 12-2 didn’t tell the whole story. It was close, it just sort of got away from Ohio and I felt they kind of ran out of pitchers. Also shows the trouble with a one game series. Are we sure the two best pitchers had everything in the tank and went after each other. I’m not. They have been playing a lot with very little rest. These series are a lot more about depth than anything else.
It’ll be fun to watch the championship — from watching the games I have no idea how this is going to go. Feel like Nevada is going in with more confidence after a 10 run win — and confidence and swagger are everything. Life gets easier as a coach if your team walks on the field and just acts like they are going to win. I work this in warmups and practice — we rehearse everything that is going to happen on game day — the pre-game warmup has to be flawless, everything to build confidence. It’s time well spent in practice and it breeds confidence.
So a lot of lessons learned — simulate pressure in practices, rehearse pre-game warmups and tell the kids they will get better with dealing with pressure over time.
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