Inside Pitch: Championship-Winning Impact Gold Coach Steve Jones… “What Makes a Travel Ball Coach Great? Knowing How to Manage the ‘Process!’”

Steve Jones, who currently is serving as Head Coach for the Impact Gold 16U – Jones team, has coached club ball for 17 years and has managed softball and baseball programs for more than 23 years all at the highest levels.

During his time as a club softball coach, he has won numerous titles including an 16U ASA Gold (now USA Gold) national title, a 12U USA Elite WFC national title, and several other high-profile regional titles and championships.

His teams have also placed as a runner-up in 12U PGF Premier Nationals and in 14U Top Club Nationals and took 2^nd place in 18U ASA Nationals with numerous other Top 3 finishes in prestigious events.

My heart is full today. Seeing my girls together tends to do that. 💙💛#missedthem pic.twitter.com/Qz3E5dJgYu

— Steve Jones (@CoachSteveJSr) May 30, 2021

Each of the teams he has coached has been primarily built from the ground up and have all been highly successful; it helps that Steve’s daughter Sa’Mya Jones, a versatile pitcher/infielder has been ranked as the #1 player in the 2024 Extra Elite 100!

Off the field, Steve is a very successful corporate lawyer and has an affinity for the study of Greek philosophy, but he spends a significant part of his downtime supporting the athletes he coaches in their other interests and activities.

He also often serves as a guest speaker at legal conferences and clinics and at coaches’ clinics and, at one of those recently held, Coach Jones presented a 20-minute speech on his insights on what goes into making a good travel ball coach.

Here are some of the excerpts and highlights of his comments …

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Someone once asked me what characteristics makes a good travel ball coach.

More specifically:

“What is the most important quality of a great coach and what would I attribute to any of the successes I have had with the teams I’ve coached or the players I have been fortunate to develop?”

My response could be perceived partly as a little “mushy,” but I wholeheartedly believe it couldn’t be more accurate… and it takes strong conviction of principle to hold to it.

What Makes For a Good Coach?

In the most basic of descriptions, I’d say that the best coaches genuinely love their players and passionately care about preparing them for their futures.

That sounds very simplistic, but I believe that at the highest levels of travel ball—and in all other coaching capacities—coaches often say they care… they sometimes believe they care and oftentimes they actually do care about their players.

Unfortunately, the elements of over-competitiveness, egos, self-aggrandizement and hesitance to sacrifice some “perceived” success in the interest of true personal growth dampens the ability of coaches to show that they care through actions more so than words.

By actions, how exactly do you do that?

Answer: by staying focused on the primary goal which is to responsibly and safely develop them into upstanding young ladies and into the best players and teammates they can be.

What Great Coaches Have in Common

As anyone would, I assume that a good coach already must come with a certain level of knowledge of the sport in which they coach—this is what I’d consider a prerequisite to coaching at all—but I believe the best coaches have a few things in common:

1. Ability to convey knowledge,
2. Flexibility in teaching methods.
3. Open mindedness,
4. Unyielding commitment,
5. Objectively equitable treatment of players, and
6. Most of all, they genuinely care about their athletes and their well-being.

Many people have a lot of knowledge of the game, but many struggle with properly conveying that knowledge in a way that athletes get it.

The key is, they must hear you, understand you and trust you enough to internalize what they hear.

Good coaches know that this requires them to teach any single concept in several different ways to fit the learning style of each individual athlete. It also requires coaches to be flexible in their methods and adapt to the players under their tutelage.

And being good at this requires an open-minded approach to teaching. Socrates is quoted as saying, “The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.”

When asked for advice on choosing a coach, I’ve often told parents and players that when they run into the coach who feels they are always right or knows everything, turn and run as fast as you can!

Intelligent coaches who understand this always seek to grow themselves just as much as they do their athletes.

Great coaches also have an uncommon commitment to the players they coach: the type of commitment that requires a few extra dinners or gifts for their spouses.

What Should the Primary Goal of a Coach Be?

It can sometimes be an externally thankless role but if a coach is motivated by positively impacting the lives of their players, it fuels commitment like nothing else. Driven by doing what is in the best interest of each player in their charge should be the primary goal of a coach.

This does not mean unnecessarily coddling players, as that can have detrimental impacts. However, it does mean being objectively fair and making merit-based decisions for the team while giving every effort to get individual athletes to understand situations and how situations can be changed if within their power to do so.

In a game where failure is statistically prevalent, teaching athletes how to navigate what they may view as failure is just as important as teaching them to succeed.

They will need this skill set in college and in life. Most importantly every action taken that impacts them should be taken because you genuinely care about them.

In travel softball we lead young ladies. A coach must realize that they are very perceptive, instinctive and going through emotional growth as much as physical growth. And nurturing their emotional growth is just as vital, if not more so, as being committed to nurturing the growth on the field (if the goal is to tap into the true potential many players have).

You can only BS them to a point and if your motivations aren’t genuine, they will know it.

How a Coach Knows He or She is Doing What’s Best for the Athlete

When you truly care and caring drives your actions, everything you do is for the best interest of your players:

• you take their preparation seriously.
• you invest in their growth.
• you invest in your own growth as a leader and as a coach,
• you care about them as individuals outside of the game,
• and you make decisions that are in their best interests with an eye toward helping to develop them into great players but also confident, well-rounded, respectful, happy, mature adults.

You are helping to prepare them for their futures—future college athlete, future college student, future spouse, future mother, future employee….

Wearing the moniker of “Coach” is far more expansive to me than the basic teacher of a skill in a sport because the highest level of success and growth depend on so much more than skill set and the responsibility that accompanies the role warrants a much more expansive view because of the influence coaches have.

Like it or not, as a coach you have one of the greatest influences on young minds in their lives and that influence is often long-lasting and impactful. That influence can be a positive enriching one or a negative, damaging one.

When you genuinely care, it is so much easier to consciously make an effort to make your actions have positive impact. Every act should be an unselfish one.

As I sometimes say, “Your acts should not be for show, but for their glow.”

I love the girls I coach as genuinely as one can imagine and everything I do with respect to them is with an interest toward making them better—at whatever they do.

The influence you have as a coach is just too important not to care. The balance is the tricky part because occasional tough love is loving just as much as the hugs during the development.

The beauty of watching athletes develop into some of the best in the game is amazingly rewarding. The satisfaction of seeing them develop into responsible caring adults prepared to face and overcome life obstacles and be positive contributors to society is even more rewarding.

That is the easy, fun, beautiful part; the much tougher (and sometimes ugly) part is the often repeated, almost cliché-like Process.

The Process

The kids go through the Process but a great coach is equipped and willing to properly manage the Process.

The Process is often unpleasant for the athlete—but growth through development almost always is. During the Process, good and responsible coaches don’t have the luxuries that others do and the byproducts aren’t pleasant for them, which is why many struggle with it.

This is especially true with highly successful teams/programs and includes but isn’t limited to:

1. You don’t have the luxury of ignoring that your responsibilities go beyond teaching/developing skills, knowledge or game strategy. The responsibility is deeper than the game at the impressionable ages at which we operate and if one can’t embrace that they should step away or see if they can find a job coaching adults instead. Your impact goes so much deeper than the game!

2. You don’t have the luxury of trying to make every parent/person love you. You won’t get the 500 “Likes” on Facebook, the adoring comments or be an Instagram darling to everyone and that’s got to be OK with you. Doing what’s right and fair and being honest about it is appreciated by those that matter most, those who understand the great results don’t just magically happen.

3. You don’t have the luxury of making sure every player gets equal playing time. Coaches would love every player to be able to play equally if that was what was warranted, but that would require a perfect world and our world just isn’t perfect. The responsibility is to develop not just skills but character. Skill development occurs in practices and outside work. The results of that hard work and development earn playing time in games, which can be lost or increased by the performance when the opportunities present themselves.

4. As much as you love them, you don’t have the luxury of high-fiving every single failure with a smile and always pronouncing that it is OK and you’ll get it the next time, or the next or somewhere in the next 50-100 times later. Making an athlete feel good about themselves is an important part of good coaching but more important is the ability to balance that with the need to teach them how to adjust after a negative result. Repackaging that negative result into a false positive one is far too often counter-productive to growth and doesn’t prepare them for the next level of the game.

5. You don’t have the luxury of 100 percent informed and understanding support. Parents often will not enjoy the Process or truly understand the Process, and this issue is often greater because they often think they do. Or they will feign complete understanding of the Process until it impacts their child. I’m blessed with a great group of parents but not immune to some of these issues… just a whole lot less of them.

6. You don’t have the luxury of coddling parents with falsities or running from the truth when discussing their child. Continue to be honest and do your best to show restraint in communicating that honesty without sacrificing the message. I once read in a parenting book that the coolest parents are usually just the bad ones!

7. You don’t have the luxury of thin skin—often you will get blamed for every failure but rarely be credited for any successes no matter how frequent they are. Don’t take it personal, it just comes with the territory.

For good coaches, it is tough to see their athletes go through struggle. You just want to hug every one of them and tell them:

• It is OK no matter how or why you fail; I’m putting you back in the lineup despite your .150 batting average.
• Or, it’s OK that you’ve struck out looking six times on the same pitch (with a hug).”
• And maybe, “Know that it’s alright to be disrespectful to your coaches, we know it’s just you expressing yourself!”
• And perhaps, “Who cares that you’re missing over the middle of the plate on 0-2 counts every batter— you will eventually get it!”

A good coach wants to do that every time, so why doesn’t he or she? Mainly for the fact that he or she is a good coach.

Teaching Players How to Prepare & Deal with Failure

Here’s one of the toughest things we have to prepare future college players for: the Process is not as forgiving in collegiate programs.

Unprepared athletes are destined for true failure without being adequately prepared to respond to perceived failure. A coach who cares about their players will work to prepare their athletes for this reality too.

When those special, sweet college coaches in that elite college program that recruited her gets them the first week of practice, their primary question isn’t about how good their footwork or glove work is or how mechanically sound their swing is or if transfers are quick and smooth or even if one can throw from a variety of arm slots efficiently.

They’ve usually figured this out before they offered and a good coach should have attended to all of these things.

The higher priority question often is how well the new players respond when that sweetheart of a coach gets in their faces and rips into them mercilessly after a mistake during what that new college coach may view as a teaching moment.

This is a chance for the athletes’ new mentors to see how the players will respond and push them farther in the face of pressure. They are still the same sweet coaches that those who playing for them end up loving, but there is a reason they are so successful.

Bottom line is, being a good coach is sort of like being a good parent: you always wonder if you are doing what is best for them and you work your butt off to be sure they get the best you have to offer.

As a coach and parent, you put their interests first, even above your own. Most of all you love them and care for them and do your best to prepare them for what lies ahead.

Different environments, slightly different skill sets, but still the same goals.

— Steve Jones