Baseball Coaching Info

Clinics Part 1

You can conduct your own clinic, or the high schools can work together and possibly involve the local college on this project. You can run one clinic with all the staff members contributing their time and efforts. These options can produce a mutually-beneficial presentation that will be a big plus for the community. A good clinic can be a big boost to both your community relations program and general promotion. Emphasize the word “good.” A class operation leaves its mark, but so does a project that lacks organization and imagination.

The clinic should be aimed at the audience that is going to bring in the most people. An ideal age group is 8-14 since most of these kids will be accompanied by their parents. The ingredients for a successful clinic include enthusiastic coaches and players, many volunteers, some prizes and a convenient place to hold the event. The format and extent of the clinic depend a great deal on the level of interest for that sport within the community.

Listed below are some clinic planning tips that you can customize for your particular situation:

• Select two dates well in advance. The second date is your bad weather date. It should be as close to the first date as possible.
• Select a good location - preferably your own field.
• See if you can find a local sponsor who is willing to help publicize the event and pay for the prizes in return for the opportunity to gain a better community image. (Sporting goods stores are ideal since they can sell equipment to the kids participating.)
• Outline the format of the clinic and then decide how many people you will need to help.
• Look at the plans from a child’s point of view, remembering the length of their attention span.
• As far as the subject matter is concerned, do not make it too technical and do not run the program beyond two hours. Any longer and the youngsters start to get restless. Make sure the subject matter will interest all members of the family. Every position on the team should be covered, and you should also have a trainer on hand to discuss injuries, equipment and good exercise programs.
• Plan the clinic on a Saturday when you have scheduled an intra-squad scrimmage or scrimmage with another team for the afternoon. Invite the kids and their families to stay and watch the scrimmage as well.
• A raffle is always a good drawing card for the clinic. The prizes can be limited to free tickets to home games, prizes, or discount coupons from the sponsor. Hold the drawings at the end of the clinic.
• Try to control access in order to get an accurate registration and hand out schedules/ticket information to parents after the clinic. People should leave by that one entrance. When they leave, you should have a ticket booth set up with tickets for the opening game on hand. The tickets should be promoted to the parents before the clinic ends.