When trying to show how good you are for coaches you do not know, and who do not know about you, how can being a little out of control be helpful? Coaches are always looking for the best players but they’re also looking for someone who can grow into being the best player.
They need to see some tools they can work with or something they can adjust to make you a better player. “It’s better to have to reign a player in, than to have to ask them for more,” is a phrase I’ve heard repeated in coaching meetings and on television broadcasts. It can apply to any sport and circumstance.
I’d rather have the player that ran to the gap, dove for the ball and missed it than the player that let the ball drop in front of them or the defensive back that tried to jump a route instead of letting them get a short completion.
When I coach my players I always tell them I will not fault them for being aggressive because I can coach that out of them, but I can not coach the player who does not want the ball in their hands in the biggest moment to want it.
An example I can give from my own life is when I went to a college try out my junior year of high school. I played both infield and outfield for high school so I jogged out to right field to throw to the bases and show off my arm.
The problem was I was too amped up, I wanted to throw the baseball through the third baseman's chest. So when it came my turn I charged hard, came up hot and fired the ball toward the third base direction. Well, I over shot it and the ball landed about 150 feet into the parking lot behind it.
I was distraught, I had messed up my opportunity, my dad and I drove three hours just for me to already be written off 30 minutes into the work out. All of that processed in my head before I got to the back of the line and the coach there gave me an “atta boy” and said “show it off”.
I had no clue if he was being serious or if he was messing with me. When the try out ended the head coach came up to me and brought up that moment as something that turned his head. Every other kid threw the ball to third base accurately and some on a bounce, except me, I tried to throw it to the moon and he appreciated that and saw that I had a good arm.
He offered me a spot on the team next year and told me he could teach me to hit the third basemen but could not teach the other guys to come up as aggressively and launch it like I did.
One of the main points I learned through my whole college recruiting process was not to be scared, you have nothing to lose by being aggressive. Which could mean you go up to a coach to talk to them, or you fight to be the first person to go for a drill, or you try so hard that you make a fool of yourself and throw a baseball out of the field. Coaches want their players to put it all on the line and that starts at a try out, so do not worry about being in control, worry about being the player that will go all out even in a drill.
