Hey sorry - been gone about 10 months. Hard to keep an audience riveted when you only blog once or twice a year. My audience isn't very big anyway. I wanted to write about early commitments for baseball ball but I guess that this could be understood for any college level sport.
You are a really good player and you have played your sport all through your youth with leagues and all stars and/or travel ball. Everyone wants you on their team. You are a gamer, you make all your plays and you are the guy your team always wants up to bat with the game on the line. Your success comes from hard work and natural ability and talent. You are an amazing player at your high school. You started on your varsity team as an eighth grader and now you are a power player as a freshman or sophomore. College baseball coaches are impressed with your high level of talent. They can see your baseball IQ from the stands. They all want you to come to their school to further your education and play ball for their college or university. Ahh, life is good! Your dream school calls...makes an offer and you accept!!!
Here in lies the rub. Just because you have committed verbally, your work is not over. If anything your hardest road is ahead of you. There are typically two roads a player can take at this time. Some players will take the easy road and will lay back on their past performances and allow complacency to creep into their game and life. Don't take this road. It could prove to be a disaster. If your future coaches sense this complacency they will withdraw this offer to play. This could lead to a tougher road to get back into the good graces of other schools.
The school that you have committed to is watching everything you do. Your baseball games, your school work, your social media accounts just to name a few things that are of great interest to your future coaches. Keep your nose to the grindstone - work on your craft, keep improving your game and keep working on your body in the gym while training. Stay focused in the classroom, keep up with your work, study your tail off to keep your grades up. For the love of all things holy keep your social media clean. In your social media life only post positive things. All kinds of posts that could be misinterpreted by your future coaches or their bosses could be disastrous to your future. We've all read the news about social media posts getting people fired. Well social media posts can also get your offer pulled. Stay classy with this...or just delete it all together.
Congrats on your offer and commitment to your dream school...now the real work begins. Don't be complacent and get to work
Coach Bale
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