The PCA Blog

Success stories

The Power of PCA Workshops: Getting Better Every Day

by Dave Di Vito

12.21.2017


At PCA, we love hearing stories like this from "Coach Dave," a youth baseball and soccer coach from Scottsdale, Arizona. As a PCA supporter, we know you've already given, but we wanted to share with you Coach Dave's story about the impact of PCA workshops on his coaching below.

I coached an 8-year-old team within Scottsdale Cal Ripken that is one of only a couple in the league that does not play all year round. Most of my players do recreational soccer, piano, recreational flag football, dance, or recreational basketball during other times of the year. The teams for the baseball league are built either via request of coach (and then the coach can accept or decline players) or they are assigned. Therefore, the year-round teams are top notch, with few players added/removed each year. I share this only to provide color for the rest of the story…as you might imagine, since most of my players do other activities my team is usually made up of a few players from the prior year(s) and then “everyone else.” This is the type of challenge others may run from, but I was excited to embrace.

The PCA course put on by Jeff Rodin with the Arizona Diamondbacks Coaching Academy was OUTSTANDING. It was exactly what I needed to build my confidence and ensure that we would have a great season. After attending a workshop, and before our first game, I printed out the first talking points (Effort) and read it, thought about it, and then wondered if these young kids might have the capacity to really receive the message, and if it was taking me out of my own comfort zone.

Both the PCA workshops and the talking points email series certainly did take me out of my comfort zone so I could improve my coaching, and when my son asked why I spent long evenings at PCA workshops when I was "already a pretty good coach," I simply answered, "I can always get better, just like you have to get better at what you're doing on the field, I have to get better at being a coach, so I go to the workshop to help me get there."

I really just wanted to share a success story and thank you for providing the content, the education, and some skills to make me a better coach. Once again, thank you very, very much for providing these tools. I will always be grateful and look forward to future programs.

As we end 2017, we'd encourage everyone not just to reflect on what they've done well in 2017, but like Coach Dave, we can all improve and get better as 2018 gets underway. Thank you, Coach Dave, for your constant drive to improve, and for using PCA coach workshops to improve as a coach and parent!

Dave Di Vito is a youth baseball and soccer coach from Scottsdale, AZ, and currently coaches in the Scottsdale Cal Ripken baseball league.