It’s no secret that not only do we like sports, we specifically love baseball (just look at our logo!). It’s also not a secret that in addition to curating this awesome community in Downers Grove, I (Eric) also coached baseball since before my kids were born, as well as served a handful of youth-focused charities.
With our interest in baseball and youth development, and with the often crazy youth baseball season winding down, we wanted to come up with something to highlight the GOOD things happening in youth coaching. We hear a lot about the “bad” experiences folks have, but we take the good ones for granted. Now’s your chance to share your stories with us!
First off…tell us why your coach is awesome. Simple enough, right? But don’t tell us that he or she helped your child have a better batting average, or strike more hitters out. Anyone can do that. Tell us why they go ABOVE and BEYOND. What coaches have taught incredible sportsmanship? Which ones are amazing mentors? Who goes out of their way to coach the person as well as the player? Who embodies respect for the game, the opponents, and the officials? What awesome experiences have you seen this season, either with your team or an opponent? Let’s hear some specific stories and flood Facebook and Instagram with the positive reasons our kids play sports!
We’re going to use social media engagement to help us with this. We’re going to pick five finalists based on likes and comments, with a little leeway to our judging panel to make an exception or two based on powerful stories. Then we’ll put the five finalists up as a poll for YOU to pick our winner.
Here are the awards…
A snazzy award to our winner, suitable for display.
Orange & Brew gift cards for all finalists since you know those coaches can use a beer.
Here’s the one we hope makes an impact – the winner’s team or organization will earn $500 from us towards gear or equipment. The four other finalists will receive $100 stipends each.
Much like a tournament monitoring pitch counts, we don’t plan to police this TOO much and we’re putting you on the honor system. We ask a couple of things for the coaches you nominate…
THIS SEASON. We’d like to make this an annual thing, so please limit to 2024 teams.Must be Chicagoland area. Realize that’s up for debate, but in general let’s keep it to Chicago and the collar counties.
Must be a baseball coach. We love softball (and other sports) but for this year’s contest, we’re looking for a baseball coach. Be sure to give us at least their first name, organization or team they coach, and age level.
Should be with a team or an organization…park district programs, community or in-house teams, travel teams, even high school teams. Please don’t nominate college or above, and as a disclaimer, the stipend must go towards an organization and will not be written directly to an individual. And being a “paid coach” does not exclude someone from winning.
Keep it civil and positive. Let’s celebrate these coaches, many of whom are volunteers.
Since there isn’t really a template for this process, we’re going to reserve the right to amend guidelines if we see anything else come up that we missed. Also, be aware we’ll likely delete negative comments, and will definitely delete any negative opinions on baseball organizations. We’ll pin this post and keep it open until Thursday, August 8th at midnight. And you must comment below to be considered (or in any re-posts if we choose to share occasionally).
Now, if you read this far, let’s hear ’em! Go to this Facebook link to nominate your coach!
