2024 Coach-in-Training Program – AU Park

 

We welcome a small number of CIT’s ages 13 and 14 each week of camp. A parent or guardian just needs to register them. There is no cost. Baseball experience, while very helpful, is not necessarily a requirement to succeed. Qualities like hustle, outgoing social skills, genuineness, sense of humor, adventurousness, optimism, enthusiasm and industriousness are the bedrock of successful coaches. The most important is we want applicants who want to be there!

 

CIT’s are treated as part of our coaching staff and wear the same outfits as our most experienced coaches. When we get the staff lunch delivered now and again, they eat at the table with the staff. 

 

We also spend time with the CIT’s teaching them the finer points of baseball and tested methods how to convey them to players of all ages. We try and hire from our CIT alumni when a paid job comes open. 

 

We are also blessed to have retired Metropolitan DC police officer Alexis Glover as our safety director. Chief, as we call him, spent 29 years making the Second District safe and enforcing the law. He spends time as well with our CIT’s offering lessons on making good choices and learning how to deal with people respectfully and effectively.

 

I remember being 13 and 14 and appreciated adults who gave me respect, explained expectations to me clearly and showed patience and skill teaching me something I don’t know and working with me to gain proficiency. I hope our CIT’s feel that way about all our team leaders. I cannot stand teams that haze and hassle younger players or younger coaches. I will never allow those negatives to enter our team culture. 

 

Through the years I have accepted invitations to be a guest coach for a few day’s or weeks at a time with other organizations to hone my own skill set. They include the Seattle Mariners minor league spring training, Los Angeles Dodgers Academy in the Dominican Republic, the Chiba Lotte Marines in Tokyo, New York Mets grounds crew under Pete Flynn, New York Yankees grounds crew and the Cuban National baseball team in Havana. Every single person I encountered on those travels treated me like a friend and with courtesy and respect. That’s what I want for our beginning coaches in training. 

 

And yes, families, parents and guardians are always welcome to come sit and watch you son or daughter coach! Tell ‘em I invited you!!

 

 

 

 

 

All the best, 

 

John

 

John McCarthy

Director 

202 230 2206