Hello South Park! You get what you deserve in running a community sports program or team . . .

There are a few truisms in creating a good community baseball (sports) program or in coaching a team. Here is one that sits near the top of the list:

You may or may not get what you want, but you will almost always get what you deserve.

File this thought away as I expect to return to it time and time again over the next few months.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you are president and you lead a community sports program that is short on volunteers. Now the desire for more volunteers is not an unusual “want” to have in a community program. But suppose your program has board meetings that are unannounced to anyone except the boardmembers. The general membership and the public are not invited. The minutes of those meetings, if there are any, are not posted on your website (you do have a website, right?) and the bylaws or constitution are not anywhere to be found. You don’t send out invitations for people to serve on the board. Instead of seeking diversity on your board, you rely on your network of buddies.  Whether you admit it or not, you have effectively advertised to your volunteer pool that your organization is closed.

Do you think it will be easy to get volunteers in this environment? Nope. Outsiders will view this outfit as being run by a version of the “good old boys.” As a result, you will get what you deserve: the opportunity to run the program by yourself. Have fun! Just don’t complain about the lack of volunteers when you need them or raise the lack of volunteers as a defense to league criticism.

In the above example, the organization didn’t  get what it wanted, but got what it deserved. It goes without saying that if you want a program rich with volunteers, you have to open up and allow parents to participate. You want them to become stakeholders in the organization. You want and value their input and have the ability to lead them in operating the league. People want to feel a part of something and that’s the environment you need to create by being open and receptive to input. Having an open organization won’t guarantee volunteers, but it will encourage more to step forward.

Here is a corollary to the truism:

What you want and what you deserve can be two totally different things.

I suppose this is like the law of unintended consequences.

Let’s take an example of the truism at work in coaching a team. Let’s say you’re a board member and a coach in a community baseball league. Outside the recreational program,  you “want” an ultra competitive travel program filled with semi-professional travel teams for kids.  Your primary goal is to win and to show the players how to win. Parents are on board because they want their kids to be winners too. You play doubleheaders all the time on weekends. You travel great distances in search of great baseball. You play seventy games per summer to keep up with the pro schedule. Your teams are doing well and you are getting your “want” until the kids decide they are not having fun in this environment. Take a look  beyond the crudeness of this “R” rated clip from a South Park episode:

Who hasn’t experienced a team that is making more and more errors as the season goes on and just doesn’t seem as excited about baseball anymore? The kids in this episode are looking forward to the end of the season so they can have “finally have some fun again” before the summer ends. On the other hand, the parents are all pumped up about going to Williamsport.

As a coach, there is a balance to be struck between playing to win and having fun. If the balance shifts to a win-at-all costs type of strategy, you might go on a win-streak for a time. But come tournament time, you will likely get what you deserve: a bunch of lethargic kids who want to do something else with their summer other than play baseball. They may not say it to you directly, but they will show it in their actions.

A balance between trying to win and having fun is a difficult balance to strike when tournament time starts and it is a “lose-one-and-be-done” environment.  If possible, try and play a number of pre-tournament games that don’t mean anything and mix it up. Everyone plays. Batting orders come out of a hat. Let players try different positions.  Have the players (helmets on) act as base coaches too. Better yet, take some time off before tournament time to wind down. You don’t need seventy games. Have a team outing, something not baseball related. How about an evening of bowling? Get creative.  If all goes well, the players will come back refreshed and approach tournament time with enthusiasm.

What do you think? Have you had experiences with this truism? Share them below in the comments area.