My favorite body language / attitude challenge to issue to the teams I coach is this:
If someone arrived in the middle of the game and the scoreboard was turned off, they should not be able to tell if our team was winning or losing, or who was personally having a good game or bad game.
Why should they not be able to tell? Because our effort, our energy, our body language, and our hustle should give no clues to what the score is!
Throughout the ups and downs of this season (we started off 0-5 and are now .500), I have strived to teach my squad to play with the same focus, competitiveness, and positive energy from the first pitch to the last pitch, regardless of the score.
Last Saturday they accomplished that goal perfectly, and I could not have been prouder of them.
We scored a run in the top of the 1st inning off of the 12 year old who throws the hardest in all of Palos Verdes; off to a great start!
But then we gave up 7 runs in the bottom of the 1st inning.
We were playing the 1st place team in our league who had only lost 1 game all season, and it would have been really easy for us to wave the white flag under those conditions.
Our kids came off the field after giving up 7 runs and I noticed immediately that their attitude and body language had quickly shifted from the excitement of scoring first, to the dejection of now all of a sudden being 6 runs down.
I gathered them near the on-deck circle and my message was simple; if we act like this game is over already, if we mope around the dugout, if we walk to our positions between innings like we’re getting our butts kicked, if we lose focus at the plate, if we look and act like what it says on the scoreboard, then guess what, yes, this game is already over.
They win and we lose.
OR, we can choose to battle on every pitch for the next 90 minutes.
We can choose to be ready mentally to make every play defensively.
We can slump our shoulders and feel sorry for ourselves, or we can keep our chins up and our chests back, and play so that if someone just arrived, they would have no idea if we were winning 3-0, losing 10-1, or if the game was tied.
We can play like they would have to ask, “who’s winning, and what’s the score?”
I didn’t say a word about needing to clean up the defensive miscues in the 1st inning. Not a word about hitting mechanics or strategy.
No yelling or overly animated pep-talk. No extra intensity.
Just a simple challenge issued calmly, focused 100% on the choice they had to make about their attitude going forward.
And they responded.
They battled.
They kept competing.
They approached each pitch, or AB, or play that didn’t go their way not with slammed bats, or slummed shoulders, or dejected looks on their faces but with positivity, resolve, and determination.
Simply put, they continued to play the game as if they didn’t know or care what the score was.
Battle, battle, battle.
And guess what happened?
90 minutes later, our Left Fielder made an incredible running catch in the gap with 2 outs in the bottom of the 6th inning and the scoreboard now read 11-8 in our favor. Ballgame over…we win!
It would have been easy, and to be honest not entirely unexpected, for a group of 11 and 12 year olds to go down 7-1 in the 1st inning against the best team in the league and mentally check out.
Our squad chose the difficult route; we battled and outscored them 10-1 during innings 2 through 6.
In my post-game speech I let them know how proud I was of them and that the win was entirely a result of their mental toughness and attitude. Period.
And while if we had ended up losing 8-7 they of course wouldn’t have felt as good as they did after getting the win, the lesson learned about attitude in the face of adversity would have been equally as valuable, and I would have been equally as proud of them.
Parents and coaches; it’s so important that we stay on top of our kid’s reactions to adversity and be there to immediately pump them up when they start getting overly emotional or down on themselves.
Those reactions are normal at this age and it’s our responsibility to address it in a positive way.
We’ve got to nip the negative and defeatist behavior in the bud.
Not by yelling or showing frustration and disappointment (because that will only make it worse), but by reminding them that the way they look on the field in terms of their body language and attitude is a powerful predictor of performance.
Positive energy and negative energy are equally contagious!
When teams approach the game in a way that makes it impossible to tell if they’re winning or losing at any given moment, great things can and will happen.
Having this type of team culture is important at all times, but even more so during the playoffs when emotions are already elevated.
Going down early isn’t the end of the world, and going up early doesn’t mean the rest of the game will be a breeze. Treat every at-bat and inning the same, and when the last out is recorded, the results on the scoreboard will speak for themselves.
Play Hard, Have Fun!