How in the world...

do I get roped into things like this? Last year it was being the football coach for my boy's football team and this year (while I was on vacation) I was named coach of my boy's baseball team (since they had to split the teams due to too many players). Funny thing is, just like football, I have NEVER played baseball. Well, let me take that back, I did play some church coed softball and some softball games at our Jensen reunions, but these don't count. How am I supposed to do this? I don't even know how to feed the baseballs into the pitching machine (pathetic, I know). Back to library I go to find all there is to know about little league and coaching. Yet even more crazy that my library visits, I have found that I have been dreaming about it. So, I have come up with a couple of plans that I hope may work. Here are just a few:

• first and foremost -- ask any dad/mom or older brother/sister or uncle/aunt or close friend or some man from the stands that has actually played ball on a school/city team to please, pretty please take my position.


• get the parents involved -- ask them to play catch with their boys everyday for 15 minutes . Then give prizes for those that practiced at home.
  
• since most of my kids have never played baseball (8 out of the 12 players) I think that I need to break the team into smaller groups to teach them some fundamentals. Some group ideas are hitting, grounders, infield and runners with rotation every 15-20 minutes so they focus only on one area at a time.
  
• to be quite honest, winning is NOT my objective (and may not be a possibility) but I want these boys to be proud and have fun. So, I came up with a point system to earn ice cream trips. After they reach 500 points, win or lose, they earn a team ice cream trip to yummy Dairy Boy.
  
• I am also checking out the local batting cases to see if we can get a discount for the team members that want to have individual instruction with a pro (since I am NO pro).

I hope, if there is anyone out, that you all can provide me some pointers. Let's just hope that we have a BLAST and maybe learn a little ball.