Leroy Engert on Coaching Philosophy (Covering the Bases)

LEROY ENGERT:  They were looking for a head coach. The program, really, was down quite a bit. To me, I took that as a challenge to go in there and try to, so-called, turn that program around. You don’t do that by yourself. You need cooperation from the administration all the way down to your assistant coaches and then your players and your parents. I think that I’m not a parent-oriented person, I’m a player-oriented person. I think that sometimes nowadays we cater to parents a little bit more. It’s parent-oriented, and it shouldn’t be. It ought to be player-oriented. I see a lot of that in little leagues as I go out and watch little league baseball. I would think, let the kid go enjoy what he is trying to do. If he wins, great. If he loses, that’s great too, because he’s learned from that experience. I see a lot of parents have a negative reaction because their son lost, or a little boy struck out with the bases loaded. Who feels worse than that little kid? That’s when he needs a pat on the back. That was the type of philosophy that I tried to carry with working with young people. More constructive criticism, rather than just criticism, per se. Where you really talked about things that they did well, and you come in the backdoor and now you try to influence them a little bit about some of the things that they needed to work on.