The 5 Steps To Youth Baseball Success: Part 1

The Purpose: Your “North Star” For All Decisions

Coach David Klein here from Legends Baseball. Thank you for joining me for the very first video of my new five-part video series, which I’m calling the 5P’s: How to Guide Your Child to Baseball Success.

Quick background about me, I’ve been coaching baseball for over 15 years worldwide, but primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area. Through my Legends baseball program, I’ve coached over 50 players that have gone on to play professional baseball, including two Olympians and 3 Major League Ballplayers. So I’ve really seen it from the youth level all the way to the professional ranks.

In 2018, I was selected by the Positive Coaching Alliance from over 800 coaches to receive the National Double-Goal Coach of the Year Award. I absolutely love what I do, and I’m a parent of two. And like you, I’m dedicated to ensuring that my child is thriving and you’re here because you want your kid to be thriving as well.

You’re a dedicated baseball parent, and I’m here to help you make some quality decisions about your child and their baseball journey because, at the end of the day, we really only got one shot at their baseball career. So we want to make it as meaningful, transformational, and as memorable as possible.

So let’s jump on into it with the 5P’s: The 5P’s for guiding your child to baseball success, which are the:

1. Purpose
2. Playing Options
3. The Plan
4. The Pivots
5. The Process.

So let’s jump right into it with “The purpose.” The purpose is genuinely your north star for all of your baseball decisions. Whenever you’re in a bind, come back to your why, and that’s going to keep you having perspective. And will keep you grounded as to whether or not this is a good baseball decision for your child or not.

So the questions that will help you really identify the purpose are:

1. What is the specific role that you want baseball to play in your child’s life?
2. Why do you want your child to play?
3. Is it because you want them to develop friendships?
4. Do you want them to develop proficiency in a sport, or do you want them to just get outside and exercise and recreate?

There are no wrong answers here. And it’s totally unique and specific to your family and your child.

• So the first thing to consider is what do you want for your child.
• The next is, what does baseball success look like for your child? Is it getting hits? Is it making the all-star team? Is it coming home excited about baseball or coming home with new friends?
• What does success look like for your child? Because that specific success factor is the particular measuring stick by which you can evaluate whether or not a particular team, a coach, or league is serving your child in the deepest way.

The second step is identifying what baseball success looks like for your child.

And the next is what are their current baseball interests and their skill level? Most of the times where I see things break down, as far as kids crying and quitting and not wanting to play ball anymore, is when the purpose, the “why” for why that child is playing baseball, is not aligned with where the player is at in their current.

And their baseball development, for instance, a player who’s totally burnt out from baseball, putting them into a really intense travel ball program is probably not the right thing to do. If a kid is eight or nine and has never played baseball before, I probably wouldn’t even put him in Little League, and I would make sure that he gets some lessons and has a quality education about the intricacies first.

So we need to know how our child’s skills are in relation to their peers and then think about… Hey, are they asking me to go out and practice? Do they watch baseball on TV? Can they hit a ball off a tee or field a ball at shortstop and throw across the diamond? Understanding where our children are in their baseball development process and their interest levels are significant for helping us map the why to the playing options.

And lastly, the thing to consider is, what is the number one outcome you’re hoping for from your child playing baseball? Is that you just want them to learn how to work on a team? Do you want them to learn about leadership? Do you want them to just get a scholarship or maybe get into High School? What is the number one thing? What is the number one reason, the purpose, the reason for why your child’s playing baseball?

Because in the following video, we’re going to be mapping “your why,” your own specific why to their playing options so that you can uncover new possibilities that you maybe didn’t know existed out there that will serve your child in the deepest way.

So in the following video, I’m going to be laying out, whether it be lessons or training programs, travel teams or youth or pony ball, I’m going to be laying it all out for you.

I hope you got something out of this. If you did, please share it with a friend like comment, send an email reply back. I love hearing from parents and interacting and helping them, helping you guide your child to baseball success.

Thanks so much for being here. Hope to see you back here with the next video and BE LEGENDARY!