Situation Checklists – The best resource for coaches I ever created

1,400+ blog posts and close to 300 videos is a heck of a lot of content to create but that is what I have done since I started Baseball By The Yard back in December, 2010.  My goal has always been to provide relevant, practical information for players, coaches, parents, and anyone else who enjoys the game of baseball.  Hopefully you think I have achieved that goal!

There are a lot of things that I’m proud of when it comes to the content I have created but some stand out more than others.  Today, I am focusing on the one I think is the best – Situation Checklists.
I have gotten a lot of positive feedback from people who visit the site but I think this resource gets the most.  If you have no idea what I am referring to then click below to get the full document sampled above.  This example shows general team situations for Beginners and more Advanced teams.  I have several other checklists that are more position specific.

Click HERE for the Checklist document

Situation Checklists have helped me immensely when structuring and organizing practices.  Use them and you will find that you and/or your players waste less time in practice.  You will also increase the overall amount of good, useful instruction over the course of a season.

The idea for this resource was sparked by a saying that I  heard my father say dozens of times about the baseball players and wrestlers he coached.  The saying is …

“I can never get mad at players for messing up something

I never taught them how to do.”

The problem with putting this into effect is that there seems to be an endless amount of things we would have to teach our players.  New situations pop up all the time that we have never covered.  How do we keep track of it all?

Answer: Situation Checklists

Here is how I created and use them.

I started with brainstorming all the plays that could happen in games and listed them in a table.  I then added two columns to the right of each item to indicate when I covered that item in practice.  It doesn’t matter if I covered this in a brief conversation or in drill work, I just would put an X in the first column to indicate that I covered it once.  The second column to the right is when I covered it again.  Every season, my goal was always to cover EVERYTHING on the list once before the season started and then sometime again in the future.  Of course, some I would cover all the time.

When organizing practices, I would just pull out the checklists to see what I still needed to cover (or cover again) and then insert them into practice accordingly.  As new things popped up, I added them to the lists.

These checklists can also be valuable to coaches who are still in the process of learning about the procedures and techniques of the game.  If there are items on the list that you are not sure how to address or teach then that becomes an opportunity to research and learn for yourself how to do it before passing it on to your players.

NOTE:  I am just an email away as well if you need anything! (BaseballByTheYard@gmail.com)

You are certainly welcome to copy my Situations Checklist(s) but I’d also recommend making your own and tailoring them to your own needs and to those of your players.

If you do, I think you will quickly see the benefit.

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Coach McCreary’s Bio Page: https://www.BaseballByTheYard.com/bio 

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