Transcript
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high effort from everybody that's involved, and the umpires are a huge part of a game, so I expect high effort from our players.
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I expect high effort from our staff, myself included.
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I expect high effort from the umpire.
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You're locked into Baseball Coaches Unplugged.
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I'm your host, ken Carpenter, and thanks for joining the show.
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In this episode, you're going to discover what two-time Wisconsin State Championship baseball coach, ryan McGinnis at Kimberly High School and he's also the athletic director shares what he looks for when he hires coaches, why you should expect high effort from everyone who's involved and this includes the umpires and a step-by-step process to handling parents who are unhappy.
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Welcome to Baseball Coaches Unplugged with Coach Ken Carpenter, presented by Athlete One.
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Baseball Coaches Unplugged is a podcast for baseball coaches, with 27 years of high school baseball coaching under his belt, here to bring you the inside scoop on all things baseball, from game-winning strategies and pitching secrets to hitting drills and defensive drills.
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On Baseball Coaches Unplugged show weekly and hear from the best coaches in the game on Baseball Coaches Unplugged.
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For those listeners who are just joining the Baseball Coaches Unplugged podcast, thanks for joining.
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But to the loyal listeners who check in every Wednesday, I need to answer the question why switch from Athlete One podcast to Baseball Coaches Unplugged?
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I've decided to go all in with baseball coaches and give the listeners the coaching insights from the best baseball coaches across the country, whether it's high school, college or at the professional level.
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Now to our guest, ryan McGinnis.
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In 2022, he received the ABCA National Ethics Coach of the Year Award.
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Let's jump in.
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Hello and welcome to Baseball Coaches Unplugged.
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Joining me today is Ryan McGinnis, two-time state champion head coach at Kimberly High School in Wisconsin, and he's also spent four years at Xavier University as a coach Coach.
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Thanks for taking the time to be on the baseball coaches unplugged.
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Yeah, I appreciate it, Ken.
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Good to be here.
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I almost slipped up and said athlete one there.
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So making that transfer over.
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Well, I got to start off by asking you you're an athletic director and a high school baseball coach.
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You've got to be slammed throughout the entire school year.
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What's your favorite place to take a vacation?
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Well, we have a place just about an hour and a half north of us, door County.
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Our family loves to go there.
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It's on the water, a lot of water, a lot of good eating places and just a good relaxing place.
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But I have an athletic family too, so we like to go to the ballpark.
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We have a minor league team here, and when the kids were young, kind of our vacations were to the fan fests and futures games.
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Before we didn't go to the all star games because those were high price deals, but we'd go the weekend before and go to the fan fest.
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We did probably four or five different ones of those.
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But yeah, door County, just north of us, a little bit north of Green Bay.
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We're about a half hour south of Green Bay, so that's our place to go to relax.
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So it's safe to say you're a Packer fan and a Milwaukee.
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Brewers fan.
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There you go.
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I like that Well.
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As a kid you grew up around minor league baseball.
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Did you realize that was going to have an impact on you and your future?
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career, no question.
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Or you're now a baseball coach and athletic director.
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Yeah, without a doubt I was so blessed to live where we lived and be raised in the family I was raised in.
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I mean, I was at a minor league park, probably when I was four years old until I bat boyed, probably when I was four and five, and I could only partially do it because I couldn't reach the top of the dugout to put the helmets up there.
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You know, that's, that was the deal, and it was the old minor league park.
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You know that you could probably suspect a little grandstand and then a bunch of a bunch of fiberglass bleachers down the lines and um, but we were in the clubhouse and I have two older brothers and my family, we, we hosted players and so, um, they were the white socks organization at that time.
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But just being at the ballpark every day, um, really kind of shaped who I am and you got to see what I really love about life is just people's stories and I learned early on man, everybody's got a story, you know, and no better place to hear a story or tell a story than in a clubhouse.
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And I'm just grateful my parents allowed me to do that because obviously a clubhouse is not the place you necessarily want to send young kids but we had a good upbringing, kind of could tell right from wrong and met a lot of great people in in the baseball world.
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So it was, it was a love of mine from the get go and I'm just forever grateful I was.
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I was in a minor league town.
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Well, you I believe it was in 2021, you received the ABCA ethics award for coaching and you got to speak at the ABCA convention.
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That to me I haven't met you prior to this podcast.
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That says a lot about you.
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I think, well, I appreciate that, yeah, and there's.
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Yeah, it was certainly humbling to get that, because I have plenty of flaws, there's no question about it.
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But to have other coaches kind of recognize you as someone who tries to do things the right way and when I don't, I'm accountable to that, I don't try to shy away from that, and that's what we as coaches try to do with our kids is you raise them to be accountable and try to make good decisions, but we all make poor ones.
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But that award I'm not sure anybody on this earth is worthy of that award, you know, because we all are broken and flawed.
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But that was a neat award to get and with some of the names that are on that award who have won it in the past, it was pretty special.
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Well, you've been very successful as a coach.
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Like I said earlier, you've got two state titles under your belt and, uh, being, you know, talking about being the ethics side of thing with with the coaching.
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How important is it for players to be humble when they're part of what I from my tells me, one of the top programs in the state of Wisconsin?
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Well, yeah, I think, if you understand the goal and our goal on the baseball field is to get better every day, individually and collectively, and if that's your goal every day and that's a chore to get kids or adults to believe because we want to chase trophies and we want to chase headlines or clicks or, you know, money or whatever it is but if it truly is to try to get better every day and to get better collectively every day, we know that that is going to be imperfect and bumpy road at best, and so I think our kids have bought into that, our parents have bought into that we have a community that's invested in in their kids.
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So I'm fortunate to be that, probably similar to the Dublin, you know it's a, it's a good Midwestern values and people that know the value of work ethic.
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So that's you know.
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And then we try to continue to like any coach, and then we try to continue to like any coach.
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You try to kind of pepper your kids with not new things but different ways to go about it.
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So our team motto we have SHSH on the back of our hats, for stay humble, stay hungry, and so when you break apart the term humility, there's a lot to that word and I'm a former English teacher to that word and I'm a former English teacher and so we spend a lot of time in our program defining words and understanding that there's a connotation and denotation to every word.
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And so you can look up a word in the dictionary and get the definition.
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That would be the denotation, but then what that word brings to a person is the connotation.
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And we all bring different when we say trust.
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If you're talking to a kid who's from a broken home, whose dad cheated on mom or mom cheated on dad, or maybe it was abusive or whatever, the word trust is much different than somebody who was raised in a home that was fostered with a loving mom-dad relationship, and that doesn't make one kid better or worse than the other.
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That's just their story and they have to hopefully own that story and share that story and then receive the story of their teammate or classmate respectfully and openly and meek and mild, and you don't want to win and you're not going to be competitive and we spin that on its head and say, no, that's not true.
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Our creator, jesus Christ, was as humble as they come and he could have done whatever he wanted at the turn of a hand and so loving people and accepting their stories, but also competing and wanting to win.
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And that's the stay hungry is.
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We all need to get better all the time, and so where in there do we find time to celebrate?
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Where in there do we find time to really buckle down and get after it?
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And that's really the secret I think to life is a lot of people go through life chasing things and they wake up one day and they're 75 and they don't know what they've been chasing.
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And so we need to know what we're chasing, we need to know why we're chasing it, and we need to take time to enjoy and appreciate all of the things we come across throughout our journey well, I'm a big fan of celebration and enthusiasm with a team, uh, but a lot of stuff you see now with you know, from high school, all the way up to the professional level, is the celebration that, uh, I don't know.
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I guess you could say is a little bit over the top.
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What is your take on?
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Um?
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I I've always been a big fan of saying act like you've been there before.
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Yeah, I think my take on it is this if it's and we spend quite a bit of time, you know, with our leadership group in our program we call it unity council.
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We spent quite a bit of time with those guys saying what do we want to put on social media as a program?
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Cause I personally have a problem with self-promotion.
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I think your actions speak for who you are and you know I used to when I was a player, you know I was back in the college player back in the early 90s.
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I played NAIA baseball at St Xavier University in Chicago and on my batting gloves, you know, I had Franklin batting gloves, so they had a little thin strip that you, you put over Um and I had initials for the work praises the man, meaning you don't need to speak, man, you just got to let your actions speak, and that's not only in a baseball field.
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You don't have to walk around saying this is what you did, because that's just to me a turnoff.
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But but I do say, if it's genuine, if your passion and celebration is genuine, there's nothing wrong with that.
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And I get goosebumps and teary-eyed and fired up when I see anybody doing anything productive with passion playing a guitar, playing the piano, singing, dancing, riding a skateboard, dunking a basketball, hitting a baseball.
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Dancing, riding a skateboard, dunking a basketball, hitting a baseball, making a great pitch, digging a volleyball, construction crew, finishing a home, you know, or whatever it is that somebody does with genuine passion and sincerity, that's reason to get fired up.
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So what we?
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So our guys, we've been blessed with guys that kind of you know, understand that or believe in that, and so if it's for us and for our guys and toward us, and not directed to putting someone else down or embarrassing somebody or trying to humiliate or or just for a social media click, then it's, then it's fair game.
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Man, be fired up to do things.
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You know, after someone hits a home run, go meet them at home plate, but keep the keep the celebration in house to our guys and to our team, and that's been successful so far.
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But we revisit that all the time, because I don't take for granted that can go sideways in a quick hurry, you know, with one kid saying one word, yep.
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Well, what do coaches around the state expect when they play Kimberly baseball?
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Well, first of all, you know I'm so fortunate to be in Wisconsin.
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We have such great high school baseball and such great travel baseball, where our travel coaches respect the high school game and kids and coaches for that matter, and it's really been a positive relationship overall.
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And so we have a lot of great programs, a lot of great players and I think we've kind of seen that even in the major league draft over the last many years quite a few first round picks, quite a few top five round picks, a bunch of division one college players, hopefully.
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What they expect when they play Kimberly.
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I don't want to speak for them, but what we work hard to do when we walk into a park is I don't want anyone feeling comfortable playing us.
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They know that we are going to play collective and not individual.
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We are going to be blue-collar from the get-go when we walk in.
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We're there to compete and we're going to play the game hard and we're going to play the game right when it's over.
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It's a respect.
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We only want to play teams that are going to give us their best shot.
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I don't want to play a rough shot team so we get a quick, easy win and it helps our seeding.
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I want to play teams that are of the same mindset.
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Man, they're going to swing the bats.
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They're going to know how to play baseball.
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They're going to keep you on your heels on defense and they can bunt the baseball.
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They're going to have catchers that can throw the ball on a stolen base is not a token.
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Their pitchers are going to compete and not be a you know they're going to have a pace to the game.
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So hopefully that's what other teams feel like when Kimberly shows up like we're in for a dogfight.
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Well, I wanted to lean toward a little bit here the athletic director side of things, because you've been a teacher, you're a coach and you're also an athletic director and what it doesn't necessarily have to be just baseball, but what separates the good coaches from the great coaches?
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In no particular order, I would say the ability to build relationships with their coaches and kids and then with parents in the community.
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So the ability to build relationships, a work ethic, a tenacious work ethic, um, a knowledge of the game, um, whatever game or subject matter they're teaching, because that matters.
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You know, sometimes I think the last five to ten years it's the we want to make these better people in life, and we do absolutely.
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But you better know your dang content.
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And so what I tell our coaches and our parents is you know, when I was an english teacher, if they're coming to class every day and they love mr mcginnis, but they're not learning how to read, write, think or analyze any better than what they did when they got there, I'm, that's not a success.
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You know, um and so, and then I think an underrated one by far to the elite coaches is they have to have the ability to listen and know what their players are thinking, and you only do that by listening to them, asking really good questions and listening to them and not feeling like you have all the answers.
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We can certainly tell some things, I think, early on.
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I mean, the longer I coach, the more I realize I don't know, and I think that's true to life and I think that's true to anything that has any substance to it.
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The more you learn, the more you figure out you don't know and the more you keep learning.
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That's the fun of what we have.
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But we have to continue to have conversations with our players and with our coaches so we know where they're coming from, and we have a big deal in our program that communication is a two-way street in two ways.
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You have to be able to approach people and have conversations.
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You have to be able to be approached and have conversations, and in those conversations whether I initiate or the player initiates or parent initiates or I initiate, you have to be able to listen to understand, and you have to be able to speak to be understood.
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And so that's imperfect, right.
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We fail at that all the time.
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Everybody, even the best communicators, fail at that all the time, because we're human.
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But that is where the breakdown happens, when kids are frustrated.
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They either didn't receive the information properly, so the coach needs to deliver it better, or they don't want to listen to it, like I don't want to hear that.
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I'm not playing, I think I should be, and this isn't right, and so you usually can figure out pretty quickly where that breakdown is.
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But those are things that I feel elite coaches do.
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You work your tail off.
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You're able to build relationships and in that I don't want to take this for granted, if you build relationships, because this is not a given, but build relationships and you have to be able to teach.
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And so you have to be able to give nuggets and not overflow people.
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You have to be able to figure out what a person can digest or what a team can digest.
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You got to be timely with your information and not just spew information.
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So people think you're smart with your information and not just spew information.
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So people think you're smart.
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And then you have to know your content and the sport.
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You've got to continue to grow in that.
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And then you have to be able to listen to your players and your coaches and then make tough decisions.
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And so courage is.
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You know courage is.
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Any great leader has to have courage, because a lot of times as a leader you're out on an island when you're making a tough decision and if it works and people jump on that island with you and if it doesn't, they bolt the other way.
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But you have to be able to do that and keep moving forward.
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Well, to help a coach out there that maybe it's an assistant wanting to go for a head coaching job, or maybe a head coach is wanting to move to another school.
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When they come in for interviews, what do you see is that a coach needs to really get that point across to you as an athletic director.
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And what are some of the mistakes some coaches make that maybe keep them from getting that head coaching position?
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Well, I think some of the mistakes people make and I think this is in any field, but I'll just speak to baseball I think it's a race to get the job rather than a race to continue to get better.
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And so when they come in, when anyone comes in for an interview, or even a player, when a high school player is talking to me or a coaching staff, I don't like talking about like the job, I like talking about how are you going to, how are you going to continue to get better?
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And if you continue to get better that job, you're probably going to have an opportunity at that job.
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So a lot of times what I see in coaches and I'm getting older, you know, so I don't want to say young coaches, but I'm really blessed that I was surrounded by quality coaches growing up and then sprinkled in there were some not so good coaches and I was of the mindset like we talked about.
00:21:20.494 --> 00:21:48.382
I mean, I grew up, obviously in a clubhouse and around baseball and was was, you know I'd sit next to Bobby Winkles, was a roving instructor at that time with the Chicago White Sox, who's a legendary guy at Arizona state, you know, hall of fame coach and then was big league manager, but he was at the tail end of his career where he'd come to Appleton a few weeks throughout the summer and I would sit next to him as he's talking to players in the clubhouse, or he'd go out and hit with some guys, so I'd be giving him the balls to then feed the players and even though I didn't understand it at that time, I was listening.
00:21:48.803 --> 00:22:10.799
And to anyone that's great at their job, as we talk about, they know how to teach and they know how to develop, and so it is a process, and if we're only worried about the result or the outcome, we lose the enjoyment of the process, and the process isn't always enjoyable, but at the outcome then becomes enjoyable because of the process, and that's what we try to tell our players.
00:22:10.799 --> 00:22:20.534
You know, like Deion Sanders, when, after they won the Superbowl, he wanted to go commit suicide and he was driving around the Cincinnati Beltway to do that, you know Tom Brady saying is this all there is to it?
00:22:20.534 --> 00:22:22.038
Isn't there anything more?
00:22:22.038 --> 00:22:24.067
I don't know what after what championship, he said that.
00:22:24.067 --> 00:22:30.778
And so that's why we have to be rooted in our values and whatever our foundation is, mine is my faith, and so, win or lose.
00:22:30.778 --> 00:22:35.079
That faith is there and and my family, you know, is there.
00:22:35.079 --> 00:22:45.676
Whether we win or lose, they love me and so and that was how I was brought up with my parents is they love me Whether I played or not, didn't play, whether I had six RBIs or had zero, and far more often I had zero than six, you know.
00:22:45.676 --> 00:22:53.696
And so I just I think we're in a race, or a lot of times that I probably was a little bit.
00:22:53.717 --> 00:22:57.871
I remember getting done coaching Xavier for four years and John Morey was the coach at that time.
00:22:57.871 --> 00:23:03.387
It gave me a ton of responsibility and, um, just let me grow and put me in touch with really good people.
00:23:03.387 --> 00:23:26.858
Um, and when I applied for a high school job in Ohio and I felt like absolutely I'm ready for this and I didn't get it, and they were, you know, they wanted me to stay on as an assistant, but you know I stayed at Xavier and continue to coach there, but I probably wasn't ready and I'm not sure you're ever ready to get your to, you get into it and you grow.
00:23:26.858 --> 00:23:38.073
But what I was doing, preparing at Xavier, and what Coach Morey helped me a ton with, was have the skill set and then, when you get your opportunity, you're going to be ready, and obviously we're still growing at this.
00:23:38.093 --> 00:23:43.450
I'm still growing, but I think a lot of times young coaches say, well, once I get the job, I'll figure it all out.
00:23:43.450 --> 00:23:46.012
Now, how about you figure a lot of it out?
00:23:46.012 --> 00:23:49.076
So when you get the job, you have a template to say how am I going to deal with?
00:23:49.076 --> 00:23:50.699
What's my parent meeting going to look like?
00:23:50.699 --> 00:23:52.340
What are practices going to look like?
00:23:52.340 --> 00:23:54.573
How am I going to deal with different personality kids?
00:23:54.573 --> 00:24:07.269
Do I really have a big toolbox of drills and cues and observations that I can dialogue with players about to help make them better, knowing that one of them is not going to help all of them?
00:24:07.269 --> 00:24:11.578
And so building that is really where I would advise young coaches to go.
00:24:14.026 --> 00:24:23.855
Well, talking about your coaching toolbox that you just brought up there, what are some absolutes that you, as a coach, and your coaching staff, have for your team?
00:24:24.656 --> 00:24:26.400
Absolutes Every day.
00:24:26.400 --> 00:24:30.894
Some of these are hard to measure, but we have some ways to do in our program.
00:24:30.894 --> 00:24:43.357
Every day you got to be driven to get yourself better Individually, and every day you have to be driven to make this team better, and those two play off of one another.
00:24:43.357 --> 00:24:59.791
But what I didn't do a good enough job of probably my first, because I'm such a team oriented guy, and part of that was because I wasn't a real good player and I was blessed to be in a great high school with a phenomenal high school coach, bruce Erickson, who passed away about a year and a half ago, and I have a picture of him and I here in my office.
00:24:59.791 --> 00:25:10.871
But being part of a great program allowed me a lot of opportunity.
00:25:10.871 --> 00:25:21.808
They wouldn't have had if I would have been on a poor program because I would have been just another guy, but because I was in a great program I appeared better than what I was because the collective group worked well together, and so that's one of the biggest non-negotiables.
00:25:21.808 --> 00:25:34.251
Obviously, working hard is the core of both of those, and so we have we have um measurements for those and how we talk to our guys and and and and.
00:25:34.251 --> 00:25:46.388
Then you know, along with that is one non-negotiable for sure is the respect and um and again, you have to be careful in this world today of how you phrase it.
00:25:46.388 --> 00:25:52.829
But you know Lamarardi had in the locker room when he was the coach of the Packers what you say here, what you see here, let it stay here when you leave here.
00:25:52.829 --> 00:25:54.852
And we believe that in our program.
00:25:54.852 --> 00:25:59.171
And that's the boasting of going out and, you know, telling everybody how great we are.
00:25:59.171 --> 00:26:01.712
That's not something we love.
00:26:01.805 --> 00:26:14.729
But we've allowed our unity council to say what do we want to social media out, because it is today's kid wants.
00:26:14.729 --> 00:26:15.150
They need to.
00:26:15.150 --> 00:26:17.718
You know there's clicks and there's people on their phone and they need to kind of publicize some of that stuff.
00:26:17.718 --> 00:26:22.148
But it more has to do with never should we ever disrespect or talk about somebody within this program to anybody else outside of this program.
00:26:22.509 --> 00:26:32.771
And that goes to one thing I can stand tall on as a coach is and I tell our players just a couple of times a year I never bad mouth any player to anyone outside of this program, ever.
00:26:32.771 --> 00:26:40.757
So even if you and I, ken, we're best buddies, I'm not going to call you up and say, man, this player, man, he's really driving me nuts.
00:26:40.757 --> 00:26:51.756
That has to be just with my staff and that has to be something that we trust our players to do as well, and so that would be grounds for immediate removal from the program.
00:26:51.756 --> 00:27:00.335
If they are putting someone else down or saying someone else cost us a game, or you know, within the program, now in-house, we can have that conversation and close the door and air it out.
00:27:00.335 --> 00:27:03.692
So those are some of the non-negotiables, I guess.
00:27:06.105 --> 00:27:20.481
Do you find that over the past 25 years of coaching, that there are some drills hitting, drills that you use that have been a lot more effective for you as a coach and for your team?
00:27:22.204 --> 00:27:24.409
Yeah, I think what I would say to that though?
00:27:24.409 --> 00:27:25.990
Yeah, no doubt, absolutely.
00:27:25.990 --> 00:27:32.740
There are some some what we call we call our salt of the earth drills or our big five.
00:27:32.740 --> 00:27:41.359
You know, we have five hitting drills and five defensive glove work drills and three pitching drills that we kind of call our salt of the earth.
00:27:41.359 --> 00:27:48.484
So we want every player to master those and then, once they master them, if they never want to use them again, they don't have to them.
00:27:48.484 --> 00:27:49.647
If they never want to use them again, they don't have to.
00:27:49.647 --> 00:27:50.509
But we feel it's a foundational principle.
00:27:50.509 --> 00:27:59.282
But what I've found is we spend more of our time now talking to our no, when we talk about hitting, we spend more time talking to our kids.
00:27:59.282 --> 00:28:03.311
We have a Kimberly hitting system that has six buckets to it.
00:28:03.952 --> 00:28:18.911
And what I found over my years and I was guilty of this big time because we you know, I'm not trying to let myself off the hook, but I'm a student of the game and as a hitter I wanted to study everything, and before video it wasn't really before video, but for video was easy.
00:28:18.911 --> 00:28:30.279
I'm a huge sports memorabilia collector and one of the reasons I am that way is when I was a kid there wasn't video and baseball cards were my video and that was my imagination and that is how I play.
00:28:30.279 --> 00:28:40.251
So I'd be looking at cards to see where they're showing them in a hitting position and what they're doing at different things and where pitchers are in a different position, and and then you're breaking that down.
00:28:40.251 --> 00:29:02.736
And so what, what we do, what, what I was guilty of then as a coach is it's not always mechanics Everybody, seemingly, goes always to mechanics it's timing, it's are you seeing the ball, it's what's your approach, and so we built that into six buckets within our system and it's really been a.
00:29:02.736 --> 00:29:11.526
We're still got a lot of work to do, no question, but what it's given our kids is the real idea that mechanics don't have to be perfect.
00:29:12.488 --> 00:29:23.865
And even though we've always preached that, I think the way we went about it sometimes it made kids feel like they have to be, and all of a sudden you're coaching the athlete out of them and they're becoming robots and they have enough people in the world trying to do that to them.
00:29:23.865 --> 00:29:27.214
We have to really fight that and say man, be an athlete, you don't have to swing.
00:29:27.214 --> 00:29:27.635
Perfect.
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