Monte Lee- Head Baseball Coach, Clemson University (SC)

iTunes Stitcher Google Spotify During this episode of Ahead of the Curve, I interviewed Monte Lee, Head Coach of Baseball at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina. Coach Lee shares his passion for wanting to become a coach from a young age, the methods he uses to communicate with his team players and staff, how he goes about designing practices, and the importance of players being intentional with their pitching and hitting.  Episode Highlights: What are the main reasons that Monte Lee became a baseball coach? What does Monte do to instill his teach culture? What does his fall training session look like? How does his mind work with practice design? Does he use technology with his practices?   How does he intentionally develop his staff? What are some of the rules that Monte Lee has?  What does a typical practice plan look like? What are they doing in the batting cages? Does Monte Lee have a system for communicating within the team setting with players that don’t play regularly?   What advice would he give to first-year coaches? What is something that he digs into that works for learning and improving?  What is something that his players love to do in practice? What is something he may do that other coaches may not do? Which resources have been helpful to Monte? 3 Key Points: He tries to eliminate the fear of failure. It is more about the process, not the result.   You can learn so much from just sitting back and listening.  When you do say something to a player, make sure that it matters.  Tweetable Quotes: “Got into coaching, really to be honest with you, I never thought about doing anything else. I just knew from a very young age.” – Monte Lee (00:47) “I can remember being 15-years-old and my high school baseball coach asking me what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I told him I want to come back and be the head baseball coach.” – Monte Lee (00:54) “The first thing I tried to instill in our guys is that everything that we do on a baseball field...we are on offense.” – Monte Lee (03:28) “We want our pitchers to throw every pitch with conviction and intent. We want our infielders when they are throwing the ball across the field to throw the ball with intent. We swing the bat with the intent to do damage.” – Monte Lee (04:23) “I would hope that if you were to ask anybody who ever worked for me, I always wanted to make sure that everybody on my staff feels appreciated and that their voice is heard. We have staff meetings at least once a week.” – Monte Lee (21:22) “We go over our team rules and our expectations and I have them sign it. It is pretty detailed. But it is pretty simple too. In a nutshell, it is just, be a good citizen.” – Monte Lee (25:29) “We have two square cages and two long cages at Clemson and we have one cage that we kind of call our data cage.” – Monte Lee (037:16) “You care about them and sometimes you probably don’t communicate with them as much as you would like to just because you feel bad for them. You feel bad that they are not getting the opportunity.” – Monte Lee (43:05) Resources Mentioned: Ahead of the Curve Podcast Twitter: @AOTC_podcast Monte Lee: Twitter Email for Monte Lee: montel@Clemson.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices