Mike Softball Trainer

Sean Hall:  How many years were you the Head Varsity Softball Coach at Hastings?

Mike Mook: I have been the Head coach at Hastings for four years.
 

Sean Hall: You lived in Winona!  How often did you drive from Winona to Hastings?

Mike Mook: I drove pretty much every day during the high school season except Sunday’s and pretty much every day during the summer. It was one hour and 40 minute drive one way!  (3 hours and 20 minute round trip). 

Sean Hall:  When you took over in Hastings their Softball program was usually towards the bottom of the Suburban East Conference.  What would you say was key in turning around the Hastings Varsity Program? 

Mike Mook: It has been a change in the culture. When I first arrived in Hastings they thought I was crazy that I wanted to practice for more than an hour and a half.  They didn’t know why we had to practice for 2 hours.  Once they started winning games they realized it was way more fun and that it was worth putting in the extra time and I often had kids that wanted to practice for way longer than two hours (some kids would be at the field as soon as I was there in the morning and would stay there till it got dark out at night).  It’s no coincidence that those players just happen to be the best players on our team.  It has been amazing to see the transformation in attitude here once the other players saw that the kids who worked the hardest had great success, it made them want to work hard also so that they could enjoy that success as well.  It was kind of contagious.  Once they saw that hard work paid off everyone wanted to work hard and become the best they could be. 

Also developing a culture of players who played hard for each other was a key.  One of the best things I started doing in my second year at Hastings was leadership training.  It made it so much easier for me because it helped the girls realize that they could be a large part of our success.  Not by what they did on the field but by what they did off the field and how they could not only make themselves better but also help their teammates perform better.  If they accomplished this, they would be helping way more people get better. I could go into way more detail on that but to keep it simple it was well worth the time spent on leadership training.   

As for me as a coach I feel that I was extremely lucky to be able to attend as many coaching clinics as I was able to attend. Any time you are around the best coaches in the world you learn so much about the game and you can then take that information back and give it to your team.  

Sean Hall:  You have encouraged your high school players to play together in the summer.  Do you think this had a lot to do with your success? 

Mike Mook: I believe very strongly that our kids playing together in the summer has helped our high school program out a lot!  It gave me a chance to coach them for another two months.  I feel like we never really reached our peak until midway through the summer.  We spend so much time at the beginning of the year on fundamentals that we probably lose some games at the beginning of the high school season because we are not as prepared for certain situations.  But that never really bothered me, because I knew it would pay off in the long run and it usually did.  We almost always played our best softball at the end of the summer when we were getting to tournament time.  

Sean Hall:  What advice would you give a coach that is trying to turn a team or a program around?

Mike Mook:  I believe there are many things that you need to do to turn a program around.  A few that stand out to me are getting the knowledge that you need to help improve your kids, find out what it is that fuels your program and feed it, and love what you do!  Get the knowledge you need to help your kids. There is no better feeling than the moment you see a kid that has worked really hard on something experience success.  The big smile on their face makes all the time you put in worth it!  The one thing that I did was get out to the coaching clinics.  I went to coaching clinics almost every weekend in the off-season.  I traveled to Minneapolis, Chicago, Ohio, Florida, Arizona and Las Vegas.  Just to get to listen to the best softball coaches I could find.  While I was at one of these clinics I had a chance to go out and eat with Linda Wells a well known softball coach and speaker and I asked her what does it take to build a strong program? And she gave me some great advice.  She said you have to find out what it is that will fuel your program and you need to feed it!  I really did not understand it at first but after thinking about it all week I started to realize that every year I would get new kids and that if they didn’t have the basic fundamentals I would have to start over and teach them the fundamentals. I realized if I were to teach the  coaches of the younger kids how to teach these fundamentals then when those kids got up to me at the high school level we would be way ahead of the game and I could spend time working on way more advanced stuff that a lot of high school teams don't get the chance to work on because they need to get the basic fundamentals down.  I would have loved to have coached all the younger kids myself but that would never work because there are not enough hours in a day to do that and coach the older kids to.  So I started to do coaching clinics every week for our youth coaches. It was the best thing I could do for our program. I was really lucky that I had so many coaches that would sacrifice their time to come in and listen to me talk for two sometimes three hours straight about softball.  Often it was pretty informal but there was a lot of information shared during these clinics.  This information included questions about strategy, fundamentals, and some of our best discussions were about how to coach kids and how to handle certain situations and how to get the best out of each kid.  It was just a great environment for our program to grow in.  I feel this was what fueled our program to be the best it could be.  

Also, all of our varsity practices were open to any of the younger kid’s parents to come in and watch.  I would often try to get some of the younger kids parents that I knew would be coaching that next summer to come and help out with our varsity team so they would see what we did every day at practice especially at the beginning of the year when we were going over the fundamentals.  It worked out great because they would help make sure our kids were doing them correctly and also they were learning how to teach their kids when they started their practices.  Also, their kids would often tag along and even though they were too young to play they would watch and learn from the older girls.  The final thing that I believe helped turn our program around is just that I loved coming to the field every day and I think it was contagious.  I tell my self every day I am the luckiest guy in the world to get paid to do this.  I have had other jobs before… I de-tasseled corn one summer NOT FUN!  To get paid to do something you would do for fun (play ball) it does not get any better than that!  I just look forward to coming to the field every day and I feel like that energy rubs off on the people around you.  Those are just a few of the many things I feel have helped turn our around our program! 

Sean Hall:  I know how much you loved the Hastings Program and the girls in the program.  Will you stay in touch with the girls in the program?
 

Mike Mook: I plan on staying in touch with the program as much as possible.  I wish I were able to coach down here and up there at the same time!  I will miss the kids and parents of Hastings a lot.  I have made some good friends in Hastings and I will always look at Hastings as a great town with great people!  I feel really strongly that the program is really just beginning to reach its potential.  This year the high school team should be one of the best in the state.  I would expect them to be an extremely strong team this year and I will look forward to keeping track of their success.  I just wish I could still be coaching them!