Through my experience, coaches are almost always the most competitive people in the world. We are the ones that would have trouble making it through life without something to strive for, something to learn, and something to give us a sense of purpose. Competition is what feeds us and what gives us that edge. As I have recently learned, it is this competitiveness that is both my biggest strength and my biggest weakness.
As a coach, you always want to do everything you can do to help every single one of your players succeed. As a group, you want to prepare them for everything they will face and to be there to help and push them along the way. Every year, I feel like I’ve gotten a little better at these things and have become more and more vocal with our players in their preparation and approach to each game. It was only when I got to the point where I could honestly say I was doing everything in my power to help our players to be successful when I realized I was doing way too much.
We have some really good players (players that are far better than I like to give them credit for), and I finally needed to treat them that way.
We’ve all heard prominent coaches say things like “I just needed to get out of their way,” but I always thought that was some type of attention-grabbing ploy, until I experienced it for myself. I felt myself doing so much that the only thing I could do to make a change was to do as little as possible. We practiced all fall and the entire month of January to prepare for the season and it was time for me to let that work pay off.
Our players responded to my taking a step back by winning 6 straight games, while averaging 11 runs per game throughout that stretch. All I could do was laugh and continuously repeat of one of the oldest sayings in the book….. “Less is more.” It’s something that seems so simple and can often times be taken the wrong way. However, it is also something I learned how to approach throughout this experience. I did less and they did more. Every situation and team is unique and should always be treated accordingly. As we head into our conference schedule, I couldn’t pick a better group of guys to “let go” as we continue into the most competitive part of our season.
Adam Akin
Assistant Head Baseball Coach
Kentucky Wesleyan College
