COACH TRAINING
Teach the Game Volunteer youth baseball and softball coaching — for the parent who said yes and starts in three weeks.
Everything in this program is built. Start with Before You Coach — it has a deadline attached
Draft Day is the three weeks before your first practice, which is where most of a season is quietly decided. First Practice is running the group once it turns up. Game Day is the two hours on Saturday, where your job is managing rather than teaching. The Long Season is the people — playing time, the parent in the car park, your own capacity in week ten. And Actually Coaching is making them measurably better by August. Below those, three modules cut across all five — safety, the two sports, and the youngest division — and two drills draw a fresh mix every time you run them.
Work through it in order, or take the lesson you need this week — nothing is locked. The drill library has the reps and the practice plan generator will build you a plan for Thursday.
What your league still requires
This program does not certify, qualify or approve anyone to coach, and finishing it satisfies none of what your league asks of you. Nearly every league requires a background check before you are alone with a team, many states require concussion-awareness certification for youth coaches, and most organizations run their own coach education with their own completion records. Those are separate from this course and unaffected by it. Ask your league what it needs from you, and do that first.
LEVEL 1 — DRAFT DAY
🛡️
Before You Coach
Level 1 · 17 screens · What your league requires that this program is not — and why it has a deadline.
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🎯
Why You're Actually Here
Level 1 · 12 screens · The job description nobody gives you, and the win-loss trap that arrives one reasonable decision at a time.
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📏
Know Your Age Group
Level 1 · 15 screens · Why the division label tells you almost nothing, and the four things to watch instead.
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📝
Reading Your Roster
Level 1 · 12 screens · Eleven names, four skill levels, and one drill run at three difficulties.
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🤝
Your Assistant Coaches
Level 1 · 15 screens · Adults are the cap on how many stations you can run — so recruiting is practice design.
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✉️
The First Parent Email
Level 1 · 10 screens · The five parts, and the three sentences that must never be in it.
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🗣️
The Parent Meeting
Level 1 · 15 screens · Fifteen minutes that prevent most of the hard conversations later, and the 24-hour rule.
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🎒
Equipment, Fields and the Bag
Level 1 · 10 screens · What the league gives you, which questions have a rulebook answer, and the one thing worth buying.
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📅
The Season Ahead
Level 1 · 10 screens · Practice time collapses once games start — the four phases, and what to plan now.
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LEVEL 2 — FIRST PRACTICE
📋
Your First Practice
Level 2 · 28 screens · Ninety minutes, eleven kids, one other adult — and the arithmetic that triples every kid's reps.
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🔢
The Touches Rule
Level 2 · 18 screens · A short line is still a line — the drills that look busy, and the difference between a touch and a rep.
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🧱
Practice Structure
Level 2 · 15 screens · Five blocks, what goes in each, and the specific mistake each one invites.
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🔄
Stations
Level 2 · 16 screens · The four properties of a station that runs itself, and where the adults go.
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🔥
Warm-Ups That Aren't Wasted
Level 2 · 17 screens · The block that absorbs late arrivals — and the questions this course hands to your league and a doctor.
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⏱️
Keeping Twelve Kids Moving
Level 2 · 12 screens · Where the minutes actually go, including the queue you cannot see because it is for you.
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🌼
Attention and Behaviour
Level 2 · 16 screens · Diagnose before you respond: design, comprehension, or something outside your field entirely.
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🌧️
Coaching in the Rain
Level 2 · 16 screens · A gym is a touches problem, and you already know how to solve those.
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👥
Practising With Four Adults vs. One
Level 2 · 15 screens · Every plan assumes a staffing level and almost none say so. Write the one-adult column.
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🚗
Did That Practice Work?
Level 2 · 12 screens · Four questions on the drive home, and why a practice feeling good is a misleading signal.
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LEVEL 3 — GAME DAY
📣
They Play, You Manage
Level 3 · 15 screens · During a game you are an administrator, not a teacher — and why shouting instructions does not land.
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📜
Building a Lineup
Level 3 · 12 screens · It matters less in a game and more across a season than anyone thinks. Rotate it.
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🧭
Position Assignments
Level 3 · 16 screens · Fair, safe and developmental genuinely conflict — safety filters first, and it is not a preference.
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🔁
Substitutions and Mandatory Play
Level 3 · 16 screens · Your league's rule, not this course's — plus the grid and the two checks that make it survivable.
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🖐️
Pitching Limits and Rest
Level 3 · 17 screens · No numbers here on purpose. Whose job it is, how to track it, and the three ways coaches lose count.
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🚦
Coaching First and Third
Level 3 · 16 screens · Two boxes, two jobs, and one signal system a sprinting nine-year-old can actually read.
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🤐
Talking to Umpires
Level 3 · 16 screens · The umpire rules the play, you coach your team — and the narrow conversation that is legitimate.
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🪑
The Dugout
Level 3 · 15 screens · The longest line you will ever build, three safety rules, and real jobs for the bench.
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📉
When It's a Blowout
Level 3 · 16 screens · Both directions, done quietly — because visible pity is sharper than the score.
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🤝
After the Game
Level 3 · 17 screens · Two minutes at the lowest-attention moment of the week, and where the post-mortem actually goes.
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LEVEL 4 — THE LONG SEASON
⏳
Playing Time
Level 4 · 16 screens · It is almost never about the minutes — and the observation you cannot fake.
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🅿️
The Parent in the Parking Lot
Level 4 · 9 screens · An angry parent in public, played out turn by turn. Listen, drop your volume, move it.
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💬
Hard Conversations, Early
Level 4 · 17 screens · Early is smaller. Facts not conclusions, and the four-part structure every one of them shares.
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📈
The Kid Who Isn't Improving
Level 4 · 16 screens · The struggling kid and the bored kid have the same cause — and it is not motivation.
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⚖️
Behaviour and Consequences
Level 4 · 16 screens · Never state a consequence you will not apply to your best player in a tight game.
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🩹
Injuries and What You Say
Level 4 · 16 screens · Your job is smaller than it feels, and the default when unsure is that they do not go back.
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🧑🤝🧑
Your Co-Coach
Level 4 · 15 screens · Nothing in the moment. Privately, lead with who owns what rather than who was right.
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🔊
Motivation That Isn't Yelling
Level 4 · 16 screens · The rousing speech is gone by the fourth drill. What works is boring and compounds.
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🔋
Your Own Burnout
Level 4 · 17 screens · The job as most people build it is too big for one volunteer. What to hand over and drop.
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🎁
Ending the Season
Level 4 · 16 screens · One specific sentence to each player, and the note to yourself that February will need.
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LEVEL 5 — ACTUALLY COACHING
🌱
What Development Means at This Age
Level 5 · 14 screens · Slower than anyone tells you — plateaus are what progress looks like, and willingness moves first.
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🎯
One Cue at a Time
Level 5 · 16 screens · How to run a correction, not which to make. Four properties of a cue, and the three-rep test.
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🙋
Teaching a Skill You Can't Do Yourself
Level 5 · 15 screens · Four ways to teach something you have never been able to do yourself.
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👤
Individual Attention in a Group of Twelve
Level 5 · 15 screens · Under four minutes each, and the distribution is never even. Two names on the plan.
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🔍
Building a Practice From a Weakness
Level 5 · 15 screens · A symptom is not a diagnosis — the five-minute block that tells you which of four causes it is.
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🎥
Seeing It On Video
Level 5 · 16 screens · It settles what happened, not what should have. Whatever a report lists, pick one.
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📊
Tracking Whether Anything Worked
Level 5 · 15 screens · One number per player, twice a season — plus the words column that is where the season shows up.
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↔️
The Player Who Is Well Ahead
Level 5 · 15 screens · Not symmetrical: one has other places to practise, the other has only you.
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🚙
Coaching Your Own Kid
Level 5 · 15 screens · The failure runs one way, and the drive home is the most important thing in it.
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🔁
Next Season
Level 5 · 15 screens · What you keep and what you throw out — and where the whole program ends up.
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CROSS-CUTTING MODULES
🚑
Safety on Your Field
Module · 38 screens · Three piles: what is true everywhere, what your league decides, and what this course refuses to give you a number for.
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🥎
Baseball vs. Softball for Coaches
Module · 31 screens · The same-list is nearly the whole program. The differs-list is four things, and one of them is a warning.
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🧸
Coaching the 6U–8U Team
Module · 24 screens · A situation, not an age — and the only division where the measure is whether they come back in February.
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REPEATABLE DRILLS
🧮
Plan That Practice
Repeatable drill · 20 screens · Kids, minutes, space, adults — now write the plan. New mix every time.
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⚖️
Reasonable or Not?
Repeatable drill · 16 screens · Is that fair to expect? Not an age question, and never was. New mix every time.
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AWAY FROM THE SCREEN
🗒️
Practical Stations
Thirty reps in six stations, assembled from the lessons — all doable before you have a roster
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📝
Self-Check
Rate yourself across four areas once you have run the stations
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📋
Readiness Summary
Milestones, ratings and skill breakdown · 0 of 4 milestones
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🧠
Final Knowledge Check
40 questions across all seven skills, drawn fresh each time · no pass mark, and nothing is locked behind it
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This course will not tell you how to swing
Hitting, throwing and fielding mechanics are genuinely contested — rotational against linear, elbow up, swing down, step-behind against crow-hop — and every school of thought has coaches who teach it as settled fact. This program takes no side, because a volunteer repeating a confident wrong cue costs a real kid a real season.
What it teaches instead is how to run a rep: one cue at a time, how to tell whether a change is helping, and when to stop talking. For the same reason it puts no numbers on pitch counts or rest — those differ by organization, and the pitch count and rest rules tool already has them for your league.