Total Reading Time: 7 minutes

Happy Monday! It’s the last week of October - if you can believe it?! Maybe you’re shifting from Fall ball to Recruiting - maybe not. Either way, I’ve got some great recruiting tips to help you avoid “projects”, along with a great distinction between working hard and competing.

So Let’s Go!

Table of Contents

• What Statues & Rock Piles tell Us About Competing

• JOIN OUR ZOOMS

• Recruiting Tips to Avoid the “Project”

What Statues & Rock Piles tell Us About Competing

I recently came across a post by Coach AJ of Mental Fitness (@CoachAJKings) that detailed the distinction between Hard Work and Competing. It was something I’d never thought about, but was too good not to share. (I’m paraphrasing but here’s the original post if you’re interested.)

Hard work is talked about everywhere. Praised everywhere. And demanded by coaches and parents, as in “you’ve got to work hard to achieve your goals.”

And yes, hard work does have it’s place, but there’s definitely a difference between hard work and competing.

Working hard is about effort. Working hard is physical. It’s things like doing the drills, showing up to practice, and sweating through your workouts. As coaches, we can pretty much insist they work hard and players can will themselves to do it.

But competing is totally different. Competing is different. Competing isn’t physical, it’s mental. It’s a mindset. It’s an internal drive to give your best in every drill, to win every rep, and to make yourself better through every action you take.

We actually need both. The discipline of hard work builds your base, while the intentionality of competitiveness separates you from your competition.

Competing has an intention. It’s specific. It’s “I’m going to be first on this sprint” versus I’m going to do 5 sprints. It’s “I’m going to hit this target 5 times before I finish” versus I’m going to throw 5 riseballs.

It’s the difference between a pile of rocks and a statue…

Hard work is just that - hard. But it’s often times unfocused, not specific. Where Competing is intentional, specific. Hard work is simply making a pile of rocks out of a slab of stone, while competing is making a statue out of a blank rock.

Competing is Michelangelo seeing the statue David inside a slab of granite.

Or Gutzon and Lincoln Borglum carving Mt. Rushmore from the granite hill in South Dakota.

Competing is specific, intentional. It’s all focused on your ultimate vision. Hard Work is simply pounding the stone into a pile of rocks.

JOIN OUR ZOOMS

So far in our zooms we’ve heard from:

• Christian Conrad (Arizona) on “How I Watch Film to Prep Myself & My Pitchers for the Weekend”

• Megan Rhodes-Smith (Tennessee) on “Coaching Our Pitcher’s Mental Game - From Practice to Games”

• plus an Open Forum Zoom where coaches share, ask and learn

Every Zoom is open to our Zoom Members - and we’d love to have you join us! Your Zoom Membership includes all Live Zooms, Recordings of All Our Zooms, as well as access to Special Content and Special Zooms…you get all this PLUS the Weekly Newsletter!

Recruiting Tips to Avoid the “Project”

Recently I was talking with Nate Walker, one of the brightest people I know, about a myriad of things - and the topic of Recruiting came up.

Nate’s background is the Analytics Departments for the Toronto Blue Jays and the Tampa Bay Rays. So his mind works very analytically and I just love how he can boil things down to their essence - their essential essence.

On the topic of recruiting, Nate says you need to to ask yourself, “Are you quantifying the value of average at a high level?”

In other words, are you looking above or below the top of the average pool. Let’s take a look at “:

“A” players are easy to identify! Anybody can ID a great player. They stand out and don’t look like a “normal” player their same age. They also attract the top programs and coaches. Their games will be jammed with all the programs you see on TV.

The question is…how good are you at evaluating the B level players? Why?? Because the top schools aren’t going to their games. These are players that CAN become A players, if you’re picking the top B level players.

Too often we go for the A level players, don’t get them and then we’re out of luck. Instead, we need to go after players we can realistically get and that will actually make our program more competitive.

Avoid recruiting off projections, which are things like:

• Athletic Build

• Looks Strong

• I Can Add 4 inches of Vertical Break

• If She Adds a Drop and a Change She Could Be Good

You don’t have time to make these changes. Be objective with your B’s. Create specific qualities that you can measure so you’re more likely to recruit the highest level B player you can find. C players keep you where you are, B players make you competitive and A players change your program.

No matter what level you coach, you’re going to want to identify the highest level player you can realistically get - without selling your NIL soul. Aim for the top of Average!!

Want the video and not a Zoom Member? No problem - solve that now…

Thanks for reading this week’s Curveball Chronicles. I hope you gained some insight, some encouragement, some knowledge or some grace.

Go make this a Great week!

Missed some previous issues? Don’t worry, I’ve got them all on my website: https://pitchingcoachcentral.com/curveball-newsletter/