News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
With baseball, softball and tee-ball season launching across the region, volunteer coaches will once again begin the job of shaping young people.
Jeremy Tollison has spent over 20 years holding various coaching, refereeing and supervisory positions in various local sports leagues. He said kids still love baseball, but it does have to compete with other things.
“So although I do think there is still a great interest in it, as a whole I think kids have found other options,” Tollison said. “Whether that be lacrosse or that be soccer. Both of those have gained quite a bit recently. But I also see quite a few kids that sit at home and that don’t play any sports.”
As someone who has coached the youngest of tee-ball players up to kids getting ready for high school baseball, Tollison said kids’ attention spans have decreased.
“The older the kid, the better they can pay attention,” Tollison said. “The younger the kid, you know, they’re out picking four leaf clovers in the outfield. But I have noticed, that kids in general, they struggle a little bit more with paying attention and staying on task.”
Tollison said that in general kids today are not as coachable as they were in seasons past and that the attitudes of kids have gotten worse.
“I think that they shut down on you much faster today,” Tollison said. “I don’t think the kids take the coaching as well as they used to. I know when I was younger, the respect I had for my coach. If he said something it’s just the way it was.”
This trend of argumentative and uninterested kids has made the job of finding coaches difficult.
“Typically when we start a league, such as the flag football league that’s going to start soon or the baseball league that just ended, there at the eleventh hour you’re trying to find coaches to fill in for the last team or two,” Tollison said. “Whereas 10 years ago it seemed like if you had six teams, you’d have 12 coaches wanting to coach, so I do think the numbers have peeled back some.”
