I have coached little league baseball for the past four years (a total of nine seasons between oldest boys who have an opportunity to play in both a fall and spring season).We play in the Grassland Baseball league in Brentwood and love the small community feel of the league. This spring I have added the responsibilities of an age-group commissioner (7/8 year olds) to my responsibilities of head coach of two teams. I have a list of baseball coaching resources and want to start a list of resources that I am using as a commissioner.
Documents
- Player Evaluation Template (Excel) – Since our 7/8 league is a draft-based league (instead of a bring-your-own-team league) we do annual player evaluations on multiple dimensions to try to keep the competitive balance between teams as even as possible. I used this document as a tool for the evaluators to mark their scores. The copies I provided to the evaluators already had the player demographics loaded so all that needed to be written in were the discrete scores.
- Consolidated Player Evaluation Template (Excel) – Ideally, each player is evaluated on each dimension by more than one evaluator. If you are able to secure multiple evaluations, this consolidated evaluation tool provides average rankings based on the various dimensions. I chose not to include dimension weighting (where one dimension is “worth” more than other) but you could easily modify the template to do that if you wanted to.
- Player Evaluation Form (PDF) – Good, concise form evaluating players on the fundamental skills needed to play baseball.
- Many states now have laws in place governing concussions in youth sports. States such as Tennessee require coaches (and some even require parents) to view concussion training each year. Two good online training resources are from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Federation of State High School Associations.
I will add additional resources as I come across or develop them but I would appreciate learning about anything that you are using as well if you are inclined to share them with me.
