What parents wouldn’t want Pete Rosell coaching their Little Leaguers?

The veteran coach in Brea (Calif.) Little League earned one of Positive Coaching Alliance’s coveted Double-Goal Coach® Awards at the 7th Annual National Youth Sports Awards sponsored by Deloitte, held April 12 at Stanford University’s Maples Pavilion.

At a ceremony featuring such sports stars as NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young and Olympic Basketball Gold Medalist Jennifer Azzi, Mr. Rosell received his award for embodying the principles of the Double-Goal Coach, whose first goal is winning, and whose second, more-important goal is teaching life lessons through sports.

While keeping his Mariners competitive year after year, Mr. Rosell also keeps his past players returning – voluntarily and without prompting – to help train each year’s team in his brand of “M-Ball.” As a competitor, Mr. Rosell demands, in no uncertain terms, the very “best” from each of his players. However, he measures that “best” less in terms of wins and losses and more in terms of effort and improvement.

According to one of the letters from a player’s parent nominating Mr. Rosell for the Double-Goal Coach Award, “(Pete) likes to win and works hard to help his players prepare to succeed. But he emphasizes process over outcome, journey over destination. He expresses this philosophy with words, but more importantly reinforces it with his actions.”

To teach life lessons, Mr. Rosell:

• distributes copies of Grantland Rice’s How to Be a Champion, which praises hard work;

• creates a theme for each season, such as “Why not?”, which one player applied to an essay contest he was dubious about entering and ended up winning the contest;

• assigns tasks to players, such as writing their definitions of character, drawing on examples from the team’s season.

This is the type of coaching Little League and Positive Coaching Alliance cultivate through the Little League Double-Goal Coach Course at www.positivecoach.org/LittleLeague. If you know of great coaches, nominate them for the 2009 National Youth Sports Awards by downloading forms from: www.positivecoach.org/apply.aspx.