episode 1 intro

Good afternoon. It's about 1.30 Eastern Standard Time here in Rhode Island. This is Mark Wapowski, Coach Mark. I'm just here to talk about coaching, teaching, and everything that goes on behind it, behind the scenes, so to say. A lot of people ask me what do I enjoy so much about coaching. My biggest thrill I get out of coaching is to see kids improve, smile, and believe in themselves and gain that self-confidence. I've seen it time and time again. I can't tell you how many times I've taken on a kid who's very inexperienced. Let's just say skill-wise is not where a lot of the rest of his teammates are. As the season goes on, you see that skill set grow, that confidence grow, his friendships grow, and that smile grow. I believe that sports are such an integral part of the fabric of society we are in creating a positive environment for children to grow and become adults. This is why I like to say that being a coach is more like being a teacher. You're more of a teacher, I think I have to say. When you're a coach, you get to sit on the sideline and direct your team to a win, whether they win or come up short. A lot of times you take credit or you take the blame. But as a teacher, it's the other elements that go along with all that. Teaching how to play the game correctly, teaching how to be a good teammate, teaching how to accept failure, keeping confidence levels up. Teaching the game of life. That's kind of a, you know, I find that to be kind of, I don't know, a tough thing to explain in a way. Teaching the game of life. Everything you do in sports and life are intertwined. Teamwork. When you graduate high school or college you go off into the workforce and a lot of places you have to work as a team. Accepting failure. Especially being a baseball coach. Three out of ten times you're going to succeed, that's about 70% failure. How to make it better and learn from your mistakes. How do we learn from our mistakes is a big part of teaching and that's a big part of coaching. What can we do to get better? How do we get better? You can face a team that's far advanced from your team, skill wise, talent wise, and get beat by 15, 20 runs and still come out of that with a positive. What do I mean by that? What do I mean by that is, yeah you lost, you took one on the chin. You can use it as a way to motivate. Use it as a way to learn, break down little parts and pieces of things that went wrong. But being able to get people to accept that they lost and they're going to get back up again and they're going to try again and they're going to get out there and keep at it and never accept failure or defeat. That's one of the biggest parts of coaching. That's what makes this job so exciting. It's not a job you volunteer by the way. I wish the parents would understand that but we'll get into that in a different segment, different time. But yeah, that's why we do what we do. Now, I'm going to touch upon what I'm doing now. Currently I sit on the board of Warren Little League. That's Warren, Rhode Island. The smallest town in the smallest state in the northeast part of the United States and we see all four seasons. Probably the best as any state here in the country. I mean it's just, but we have a hot bed of talent up here in this state. My town merged with Bristol and their all-star team won their first ever district in the 10U and the 10U division. My stepson plays for that team. It was quite the experience and I can't emphasize how much excitement that brought on for the younger generation of kids coming up behind me, the 10 year olds. And they all talk about it, you know. The 12U team above the 10U team went to the district finals and they lost to the team that eventually lost to the state championship who ended up going to, there were a couple wins away from Williamsport, but it was a fun summer. Baseball is back, sports are back. This COVID nightmare is over. Knock on wood, but it's behind us. To say that COVID moment didn't set a lot of people back. What I mean by setting back is it hurt a lot of growth and potential within the sports world. You saw it in pro sports, baseball cut down to 60 games and a lot of teams, a lot of players just threw in the towel and said we'll come back next year if there is a next year. Football played a watered down version with no fans in the stands. There were no fans in the stands anywhere. College basketball, 20 games, no, there was no non-conference schedules. There really wasn't a feel for it. Sports sucked. It fucking sucked. The thing was, you didn't know what was going to happen next. I know I was coaching football at the time and it was actually kind of summer ball that led into football. We only played against two or three other teams in the town and a lot of kids weren't playing that year. Kids that came out got a lot better. I'm going to say this, I think out of seven of the kids on my C-ball team, I think seven of those kids made the All-Stars out of nine of them. Then I got a few other ones on the team who were going to be All-Stars. They learned a lot that summer, but make no doubt about it, it was a mess. I think that we weren't sure that it was going to be normal again. For a while it wasn't. 2021, CYO basketball, season five, a lot of kids had to wear masks. They drastically cut down the time of the games. There were a lot of teams that were not participating. It wasn't fun. It sucked. They didn't learn a lot. It was heartbreaking. Then comes last fall ball season and baseball. I feel like that was the turning point when things started to change a little bit. No, 2021, correct. I feel like that was the time when people started to get more involved, to kick it back up again. Okay, we're going to get through this. The Midas Fall Ball team here on Warren ended up having a pretty good season. Ended up going about 500 regular season. Did pretty well in the Scott Grace tournament, which we will be kicking off tonight at 530. Frigid cold, but excited to be there. We did well. That excitement started to grow. This fall, we were able to field full teams and have a full schedule again. The excitement was starting to come back. You could feel it. You could feel it. With everything that's happened this year, with the all-star success of these towns and all these kids involved, the excitement level is back. We are a baseball town once again. Now, football, everybody plays. A lot of kids play football in the fall. I know one of mine will be coming next fall. It's such a beautiful thing to see, those fields full. Once in a while in practice, play catch. Not sit our asses in front of a video game screen, TV screen. You know what I mean. It's great. That's why we do what we do. It was tough. There was this long, dark moment. I believe it was 2020. I was in the spring. You had all these COVID scares and stuff. You didn't know what the following spring was going to bring. You didn't. It got a lot better as the year went on. This year, it's back. To say it makes our job as coaches, as teachers, as role models more important. It was always an important gig. With that two-year hiatus and then a comeback, and you've got this level of intensity and attention and interest, it makes our job a little bit more difficult because we've got to keep it there. Don't forget, two years ago, you didn't know what we were ahead of. You didn't know what the future was going to be. You didn't know if we were going to be in math for the next 10 years. You didn't know if they were going to just shut it down, like they shut everything else down. This has been the best rebound. It's the best feeling. Just to see these kids out there running around and having a blast and learning and learning and learning and wanting more. When they hit you up saying, hey, can we go practice? Can we practice back in? I built a batting cage in my backyard and a pitcher's mound. Let me tell you, if they could go out there seven days a week, three times a day, they'd do it. I love that. I love that because of the pandemic, I believe we were starting to see this scary place where kids were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to go to school, and they were going to 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