A reader contacted me yesterday and asked for a pre-season checklist I had produced a while back. He could not find it on my site. After searching for myself, I realized I had never posted them to my website. I must have posted it on a baseball forum site and forgot to put it out to my readers. Well, now I am.
When you click on the links below, the documents will open up. Both checklists are things that I wanted to cover with the team before our first game and at least once more during the season. The two small columns to the right of each situation were for me to place a check to let me know I covered that situation. When planning practices and meetings, I would use the checklists to make sure I was covering what I needed to.
As a coach, I never wanted my players to be in a situation and not know what to do. I knew that young players would forget sometimes and make mistakes but I would sleep better knowing that I at least had discussed it with them beforehand. Not many things are worse than your team making a mistake on something you never taught them. In those situations, I saw the mistake as my fault not theirs. You will notice that the checklists includes things like on-the-field altercations. Those situations can get real ugly in a hurry if young players (and their parents!) are not told what to do. Situations like that are just as important to teach as turning a double play and all need to know prior to one happening for real.
Both checklists are not all-inclusive. I would continue to add things each year as they came up so be sure to add some of your own as needed. Many of the situations are my own abbreviations to save space so if there are any you are not sure about or would like to know how I covered it with my team, just shoot me an email.
I hope you find them useful!
