My Prezi

My Prezi provides the story of my life and my love for sports, coaching and baseball. I grew up in Cleveland, OH and quickly learned to become a Cleveland Indians (baseball) and Cleveland Browns (football) fan. I spent many days in my youth and teenage years in Cleveland Municipal Stadium cheering on my teams and living my fantasy as a major league baseball player or pro football player. Baseball came easier to me and I had to work much harder at football. That work paid off and I received an athletic scholarship to play football at Miami University. I enjoyed the sport and eventually became a collegiate football coach at my alma mater. I eventually decided on a career change, was married and had children. At age 5 my oldest son became enamored with baseball and I reengaged in a game I loved as a child. This time as a baseball coach, which I have been doing successfully for the past 15 years.

I like Prezi presentation style as it provides the opportunity for both simplicity and complexity - all on one page. In my life as a business executive, I presented many, way too many, lengthy, wordy, boring, presentations to employees, customers and senior leaders. This format is particularly good for story telling. It allows for the use of multimedia which reinforces the understanding and retention of recipients. As with any "technology" the process and connection from embedding to internet connections all need to be in their proper place at the desired time for a smooth outcome.

Three Great Teacher Blogs

These 3 blogs do not have as much flash as many of the teacher blogs I encountered in my initial search, but the content was interesting and generally hit the mark with my interest.

http://qcbaseball.blogspot.com/

This blog provides an overview of various skills and drills to assist youth coaches. I particularly enjoy learning about new set of hitting drills. Hitting a baseball is one of the hardest skills to master in sports. This site covered how to work with players to achieve the goal of hitting a line drives which will allow players with the best opportunity for success. In the most recent post this site provided a good overview of how to make adjustments by focusing on a specific spot on the baseball until the result is more line drives. The post also mentioned that the best time to work on developing and refining this skill is during winter workouts.

http://johntreed.com/blogs/john-t-reed-s-baseball-coaching-blog/132030595-too-many-overuse-injuries-among-youth-baseball-pitchers

I found this site to be interesting because of the diversity of topics covered - baseball was just a small, but important part of the authors experiences and background. The overall perspective of sports offered by the author is varied and refreshing. Counting baseball, high school volleyball, and soccer, the author coached over thirty-five teams ranging from 5-year olds in tee ball to high school and semi-pro baseball. The lead article dealt with the issue of "overuse injuries in youth baseball" caused by "overly determined"  parents pushing their children to become full time participants in a single sport causing overuse of joints leading to permanent damage. This is a very hot topic for youth baseball pitchers, where arm injuries resulting in surgery for pre teen and teenagers is occurring at an alarming rate. This same "overuse" issue exists in a plethora of sports due to overzealous parents wishing their children to succeed for their own self esteem. Coaches also need to be be mindful of protecting athletes versus exacerbating this phenomenon with their desire to win.

http://www.baseballpositive.com/

This blog is chalk full of various skills, drills and useful tips for baseball players, parents and coaches. I specifically drawn to the graphics, pictures and links to YouTube and other video. Its focus is teaching kids to play "positive baseball". The author, Mark Linden has a lifetime of business experience, he played professionally, coached collegiately. He has spent the past seven years working exclusively with the U 12 level organizing training and development programs that are age appropriate and effective. I enjoyed reading through the parent section and believe their were some good tips for understanding the perspective of both parents and coaches. That section took me back seven or so years ago when I was coaching a U 12 baseball team. It reminded me the importance of communication and collaboration with parents.

Welcome to my blog

Good morning to all,

My name is David Hatgas, after a 38 year career as a college coach and global business executive I accepted an early retirement package and have decided to dedicate the final stages of my work life to service in public education. In 1979 I received a grade 7 - 12 teacher certificate in Business Education from Miami University. I am in the process of renewing my teachers certificate, hence this class, and I will be coaching a middle school baseball team this Spring. So I thought the baseball blog might be a useful - let's see how it works?

With this change in career direction, I hope to achieve three things as a teacher and coach:
 
1.) Share the functional experience learned as a global business executive and college coach
2.) Give back service to the community in a meaningful way
3.) Impact students by assisting them to realize their full potential

Kind regards,

Dave