TP Baseball Coaches Meeting on April 16

A THURSDAY GATHERING AT THE BOB ABATE COMMUNITY CENTRE IS SCHEDULED FOR ANY HOUSE LEAGUE COACHES WHO MISSED OUR FIRST MEETING TO DISCUSS THE ‘COACHES CODE OF CONDUCT’ FOR THE UPCOMING 2015 SEASON

Photo from the first Toronto Playgrounds House League Baseball Coaches Code of Conduct Meeting at the Bob Abate Community and Recreation Centre on March 26, 2015.

The Toronto Playgrounds Baseball Committee will be holding another Coaches Meeting on Thursday, April 16 at 7:00 p.m. at either the Bob Abate Community and Recreation Centre (485 Montrose Avenue, located on the east side of the street just south of Bloor and across the road from Christie Pits) or the Alex Duff Pool Building (779 Crawford Street, located in the northwest quadrant of Christie Pits) for any volunteer house league coaches who were unable to attend our first meeting back in March.

The Committee will confirm the site for the meeting on Tuesday (April 14) evening via a website update, Twitter feed (@TPbaseballnews) and email.

This important meeting is intended for everyone who is wishing to be involved in on-field coaching with our baseball program during the 2015 season. 

The Committee will be introducing a formal ‘Coaches Code of Conduct’ document this season. Anyone wishing to be involved in coaching games and/or practices this season will have to sign a copy and return it to us in order to be considered a formal coach.

In addition, we will be discussing the expectations surrounding coaching, the procedures we expect people to follow, the training opportunities that our league will be providing to you, and members from our baseball committee will be on hand to answer any questions any of you have regarding our league.

Everyone, whether you’ve coached with us before or are brand new, are asked to attend the meeting and must sign and return a  copy of Code of Conduct. The Committee will be posting details of the ‘Coaches Code of Conduct’ on the website and will also be emailing copies of the code of conduct to all coaches ahead of the meeting. We kindly ask all coaches to look through it and hopefully bring it with you signed to the meeting.

Secondly, there will be divisional house league coaches meetings held to help everyone prepare for the beginning of our 2015 season. The meetings will be held at the Bob Abate Community and Recreation Centre (485 Montrose) as follows:

• Wednesday April 22: Tee Ball and Rookie Ball division coaches – 6:45 p.m. to 8:15 p.m.
• Thursday April 23: Mosquito and Peewee division coaches – 6:45 p.m. to 8:15 p.m.

The purpose of these meetings will be to meet the other coaches in your division, to point out particular areas of interest and field any questions about what will be happening as we move forward into the season, and to organize our pre-season practice schedule. The Committee will be sending all coaches some written material later in the week of April 13 that we’d  like you to read carefully so that we can discuss any questions or points arising from the material at the divisional meetings.

Organizing the pre-season practice schedule will be a key objective of the divisional coaches meetings. At these meetings, we will be asking you to tell us any days that you won’t be available during our pre-season practice schedule, which will begin on Saturday May 2 and run until Thursday May 14. During the pre-season, the Committee is hoping to schedule every team for three pre-season practices.

At the divisional meetings, we will also be discussing some up-coming coach training opportunities that we will be providing. There will be evening on-field coach training sessions for Rookie Ball, Mosquito, and Peewee coaches at Christie Pits in late April featuring drills and ideas led by several of our experienced coaches who attended the Blue Jays Coaches Clinic at the Rogers Centre back in January. We’ll be holding the sessions twice (you only attend once!) in order to make it as easy as possible for everyone to get to one. There will be a separate on-field clinic for Tee Ball coaches that will be led by veteran tee ball coach and umpire Mike Zimmerman…we’ll discuss the date at the meeting.

Saturday, April 25 and Sunday, April 26 will be the Player Evaluation Days for the Rookie Ball (2006-2007), Mosquito (2004-2005), and Peewee (2002-2003) divisions. (We don’t hold evaluation sessions for Tee Ball (2008-2011) players.) The Committee is holding the evaluation sessions in order to get a sense of the ability levels of the players so that we can put together teams that are as even and balanced as possible. There will be hitting, infield, and outfield stations…If any of you are available on those days and interested in helping to run one of the stations (alongside experienced coaches) please let us know.