BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED
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BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED
Steal These Practice Strategies from One of America’s Top High School Baseball Teams
What does it take to build a high school baseball powerhouse ranked #1 in Arkansas and among the top 25 programs nationally? Coach Leighton Hardin of Conway High School pulls back the curtain on his championship formula.
The secret to Conway's "Wampus Cats" success starts with three non-negotiable values: team, toughness, and competitiveness. Coach Hardin demonstrates how following legendary coaches throughout his career prepared him to establish his own winning culture while respecting program traditions.
You'll discover Conway's innovative practice approach, including their game-changing pregame throwing routine that ensures players are mentally and physically ready from the first pitch. Hardin explains why practicing above game speed prepares his team for any situation they'll face in competition.
Perhaps most fascinating is how Conway adapted when faced with physical limitations. Without power hitters throughout the lineup, Harden implemented a specialized pitching strategy and small-ball approach that led to a state championship with an undersized team. His emphasis on two-strike hitting and situational baseball provides a masterclass in maximizing team strengths.
The mental side of baseball receives special attention as Coach Hardin shares his refreshing perspective on failure: "There was one perfect human that lived. It was about 2,000 years ago and that's none of us." This honest approach creates an environment where players develop resilience rather than fear of mistakes.
Beyond the diamond, Harden reveals his ultimate goal of developing "productive members of society, great husbands, great fathers" – demonstrating why Conway's success transcends wins and losses. Whether you coach baseball or simply appreciate leadership excellence, this conversation delivers practical wisdom you can apply immediately.
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Welcome back to Baseball Coaches Unplugged, the show that takes you inside the minds of elite coaches and athletes to help you sharpen your game both on and off the field. I'm your host, coach Ken Carpenter, and today's guest is someone whose program continues to raise the bar in high school baseball. We're heading down to Arkansas to talk to Coach Leighton Harden, the head coach at Conway High School, a program known not just for its win, but for its culture, consistency and player development. Coach Harden has built something special, and today we're pulling back the curtain on what makes his approach so effective. We're diving into leadership, building a program that lasts and how to develop mentally tough athletes in today's game. So grab a pen, because there's going to be some gold in this one.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Baseball Coaches Unplugged with Coach Ken Carpenter, presented by Athlete One. 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. We're covering it all. Whether you're a high school coach, college coach or just a baseball enthusiast, we'll dive into the tactics and techniques that make the difference on and off the field. Discover how to build a winning mentality, inspire your players and get them truly bought into your game philosophy Plus, get the latest insights on recruiting, coaching, leadership and crafting a team culture that champions productivity and success. Join Coach every week as he breaks down the game and shares incredible behind-the-scenes stories. Your competitive edge starts here, so check out the show weekly and hear from the best coaches in the game. On Baseball Coaches Unplugged.
Speaker 1:Baseball Coaches Unplugged is proud to be partnered with the netting professionals, improving programs one facility at a time. The netting pros specialize in the design, fabrication and installation of custom netting for baseball and softball. This includes backstops, batting cages, bp turtles, screens, ball carts and more. They also design and install digital graphic wall padding, windscreen, turf, turf protectors, dugout benches and cubbies. They're not limited to just baseball and softball. They also work with football, soccer, lacrosse and golf courses. Contact them today at 844-620-2707. That's 844-620-2707. Or visit them online at wwwnettingproscom. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share this episode with another coach, player or parent who needs to hear it. I'm your host, butch cadden carpenter, and joining me today is layton harden, head baseball coach at conway high school in arkansas and currently ranked number one in the state and top 25 in the nation Coach, thanks for taking time to be on Baseball.
Speaker 3:Coaches Unplugged. We appreciate it, glad to be here and glad to share whatever we can to help out the coaches around the nation.
Speaker 1:Well, I always got to start off the podcast with a question. It just drives me crazy and I was trying to figure it out. I've never heard of your mascot before. What? What is a wampus cat?
Speaker 3:so there are only four wampus cats in the nation. Uh, we're one of them. A wampus cat has six legs. Uh, the story is for running as fast as light. Two are for fighting with all its might. So it's a six-legged cat that uh runs fast and fights with its other two legs oh, okay, wow, that's, that's the first.
Speaker 1:That's the first on the show very very unique. Well, you followed a legend and you you had. You got started off and had a really good career going, and you followed a legend to come to Conway and pretty much you've had no problem continuing the winning ways. Every great coach has a foundation. What are the core values you build your team around there at Conway?
Speaker 3:So for us as a program, we build it around team toughness and competitiveness. So everything we do, whether it's workouts in the weight room, practice, those are the three values we're going to instill in kids. Every lesson we go to goes back to those three values. You know you talk about following a legend. Coach Boucher did a fantastic job of setting things up here at Conway for me to be successful after I followed him, but also for his success while he was here. You know, before I came here I followed another legend at Lakeside and coach Tommy White, and then before that I was at Malvern, followed a legend who was there that started the program, darrell Baker.
Speaker 3:So it wasn't something that was kind of new to me. You know it's the third time. Being able to do that and having that experience, kind of you know, really helped coming into this situation where you know the people here are really good too. They didn't expect me to be coach voucher. They knew I was going to be myself, whatever that brought. So there was no expectation of, hey, we're following this guy, you got to do the same things it was. You know, this is your program.
Speaker 1:Now Bring in whatever it is you do and we've done that and you know it's been successful so far. Well, I, you know I got it. I followed a legend when I was a coach at Buckeye Valley and you know as great as the community was about letting me step in and do my thing. There still is that little bit of added pressure there, knowing what the guy ahead of you had done.
Speaker 3:There is, but you've got to control it. I mean, you can only control what you control and that's the program the way you know how to run it. Obviously, coach Boucher had a lot of success here, won a lot of conference championships, two state championships. But at the end of the day, you have to be true to yourself, be who you are and run the program the way you know how, and that's what we had to do when we got here.
Speaker 1:Well, take me inside your practices here. What is one thing that separates your practices from the average high school baseball program out there?
Speaker 3:You know, I don't know that I would say anything really separates it, but we're going to do everything full bore. You know one of the things that we kind of have a unique warm-up when we go to games that we've got a throwing progression we go through which is really you know it's a timed catch play through that. You know, once they get done with a round they're going to have to get tires and throw it to the fence and run back and then they go back through the catch play and they've got it timed and you know everything's going to be timed and we got to play at game speed or higher. That way when we get into the game you know there's nothing that's going to surprise us. Same thing with hitting.
Speaker 3:We'll go off machine work and we'll see better than whatever pitcher we're going to face, whatever we think that is, or whatever scouting or we have on that pitcher. So if he's a guy that's 85, 88 with you know a little sink, we'll 85-88 with you know a little sink, we'll set the machine to 90-92 with a little sink, with whatever off-speed goes with that. So you know, just practicing above game speed I think is a big thing for our guys. The other part of that. Just going back to our values with team, you know our guys get along really well and they work really well together and they know their job at the end of the day is to find a way to win. You know your job may be to pinch run today, it may be just to come in and go in a relief roll fifth or sixth inning. Whatever it is, we're going to work together and find a way to win and our guys buy into that and do a really good job of working together.
Speaker 1:If I could. I'm really intrigued by what you said about your pregame throwing. Could you kind of? Is it something? You can explain the steps?
Speaker 3:to it. We can try. So we'll start. We get three mans in a line, so we'll have six guys throwing together. First thing they have to do is make 20 rundown throws. After they do that, they transition into what we call 20 running throws, which is just kind of a momentum throw. So they'll switch lines as they're doing the rundowns and the running throws. From there we'll just go quick, catch 20 throws and after you make a throw you go to the end of your line. Then we'll go what we call soft toss throws. Where I catch and it's really just a double play feed We'll double play feed to a guy we're trying to catch with the top of our hands. Stay on top of the ball, small circles, get the ball out quick to a partner down there. He catches it, soft toss throw to the other guy and then they have to make 20 throws with that. Then we'll flip it where they go Soft toss throws the other direction, and so that's 80 total throws in your group. Get on the tire, throw it down back.
Speaker 1:You've got eight minutes to go through that three times. Wow, I love that. That's. If you're not ready by that time, then you're never going to be ready.
Speaker 3:We had the throwing program that we always did. This year. We started a little slow in the first inning. We would give teams something silly walk a guy, pass ball, and then it's ground ball, ground ball. We're down 1-0 all of a sudden. So it was just a way to hey, we got to get ready to start the game, and that's kind of what we came up with to get there ready to start the game. And that's kind of what we came up with to get there.
Speaker 3:Well, since your arrival there at Conway, can you share a moment that defines what your program's all about. So that second year we won a state championship and it was with. You know, really talent-wise we were just mid-level in the state here, but we had some guys that were really tough and really resilient. The first conference game we had that year we lost 2-1 to North Little Rock and it was one of those we realized. You know, this isn't going to be a high-level offensive team. You know we had 150, 160-pound kids throughout the lineup. So we're going to have to find a different way to win With that.
Speaker 3:We knew pitching-wise we probably weren't just going to give the ball to a guy and he's going to be able to go the whole game. We came up with a scenario where we would go 2-2-1-2 or 2-2-2-1 with our pitchers because we have some depth on the mound. Then it was with our pitchers go get your three outs, go get your six outs, let's hand it off to the next guy. That way our guys kind of have a defined role and they know this. All right, this is my job. I'm going to go do this for the team and for some of those guys, especially now the younger guys that journey is to go through six innings and a game gets really long for them.
Speaker 3:And you know, one thing goes wrong. Hey, man, it's the second inning. Know, all I've got to do is get out of this inning. The next guy's coming in. You know, I think that helped with our mentality and built some resilience. And then by the end of the year those guys are like, hey, why are you not letting me go more? I really want to go the whole game. Okay, at that point, there you go, there's the ball, go get it. And, you know, completely changed the mindset of.
Speaker 1:So saying that you have 150, 160-pound guys throughout the lineup offensively? Were you a small ball kind of team or how did you handle that?
Speaker 3:We had to go into some small ball that year for sure, we definitely ran the bases. We had to be a high-level defensive team and that's one of the things I feel like. That year we had three short stops on the infield at each spot. Outfield was really good. If you hit the ball in the air, it really didn't drop, so it was really keep teams from scoring, grind it out, find a way to score two or three runs to win a game, and yeah, that's what they found a way to do.
Speaker 1:Well, what's one thing that you strongly believe in that most coaches might necessarily not agree with?
Speaker 3:Gosh, you know I think there's still the old school approach of building the toughness with the kids there's. You know there's a lot of different ways and with travel ball, you know it's a little bit looser game now. But you know we're still going to be tight with the group. We're going to build a team. It's not going to be a bunch of individuals. You know, with that offensively, two-strike hitting is huge, I think, at our level, especially if you don't have guys hitting the ball out of the yard. If you want to see a good hitter, see what he does with two strikes, if he can handle the ball, manipulate the barrel there to where we're fouling, pitches off and staying at the plate, work the pitcher, get him out of the game. That's invaluable to a high school program right now, unless you've got eight, nine guys in the lineup that can hit the ball out of the yard.
Speaker 1:When talking small ball, how much time do you put into the bunt game?
Speaker 3:We do so. We'll practice in the mornings at six o'clock. We'll go for an hour practice there. 30 minutes of that is offensive small game. From there, the other 30 minutes is usually defensive short game. Then the afternoons we go to the field and we put it together as a team on the field. You've got about an hour of offensive work every day, or, excuse me, an hour of offensive and defensive work every day with it.
Speaker 1:I saw this the other day, the Tennessee versusanderbilt game, and the guy hits the home run and, uh, you know yelling at the infielders and then you know kind of it's all about me approach. I guess what is your take on? Uh, on that, as far as guys chirping after they hit a home run at the opposing team and the whole all about me attitude, it sounds like you're more of a team guy and not really into that side of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, when I came here, that was one of the questions I was asked in the interview, I guess is how do you handle that? And really the whole focus needs to be on us. This game it's. You know there's another team that shows up to play you, but you're playing against yourself. So why would we even focus on the other team? And I'm not saying there's never been a moment where our team hasn't done that, but you've got to pull them back in. You know, this is what we're about. We're about us. Who cares who the other? I mean that's Play the game against, but you're playing against yourself. At the end of the day, are you doing what we think is important? Are you able to execute the things that we're supposed to execute? And if you do more times than not, we're going to be on the right side of the scoreboard at the end of the game.
Speaker 1:So keep it with us. Have you had a time where you failed as a coach, where it's like you know I didn't do what I needed to do there, and how did you respond and correct it and turn it into a?
Speaker 3:positive. Yeah, absolutely. I mean. You fail every day and I think your kids need to know that you failed, because they're afraid of failure and they need to know it's okay to fail. There was one perfect human that lived. It was about 2,000 years ago and that's none of us. So it's okay to make mistakes here, you know, and that's none of us. So it's okay to make mistakes here, you know, and that's one of the things. Sometimes we'll go through machine scrimmage and if they make an error, we'll send them to the fence and back. They got to be back to their position in 25 seconds and we'll meet as a group. Hey, anybody mad at Johnny for making the error? Nope, we're okay. We're going to make the next play. Okay, go let the guys down. Maybe you may feel that way and maybe we had to run the fence for you, but it's okay, we're going to make the next play. Let's get over it. Go to the next one.
Speaker 1:Makes sense. I like that attitude because the mental side of the game is clearly the toughest part of playing baseball and you know how do you get through to the player that's struggling and you know this guy's a really good player for me and he's having a tough time. Is there anything you do to try to get through to those guys?
Speaker 3:That's a real individual situation and it's just knowing your kids and being able to connect with them and see what's going on. And there could be a multitude of things and what you need to do with them, and it may just be spending time with them. You know. If it's something going on hitting wise, just spend a little bit of extra time with them in the cage, one-on-one, because you're a good player at the end of the day. So if you're a good player, you're going to play good and this may just not be your time. That's okay. Things we do, you know, we we kind of try to get them to where they're going to be out of their heads. With all the work we do, whether it's weight room, the warmup hey, this is what we do and this is the attitude we take to it. So staying that same mental focus throughout, whether things are going well or not.
Speaker 1:When your team is good, which it sounds like you guys have been pretty good for for a while how do you keep them humbled and focused on just that next game or the next pitch?
Speaker 3:actually, yeah, gosh, that's hard. You know, we went through a win streak this year, lasted for a while, got here towards the end of the year where we really weren't playing very well. We lost a game we played well, came back and we were down 5-2, came back, tied it up 5-5 in the seventh, ended up losing 6-5, which you know, I told the kids. Proud of you, you were resilient, you found a way to come back. We just didn't respond well. The game after that we won 16-6, but just didn't play well, real sloppy, not who we were. So at that point we had to go get their focus back no-transcript.
Speaker 1:we end up losing like three to one, and all of our mistakes were made defending the button, and so when the game was over, I mean the game literally ended in like an hour 20. You know, and I was like we talked about it and then I said let's go back out on the field and let's work through a couple things. And I took a ton of heat from parents saying you know, what are you? What are you doing? You're embarrassing the players because the other team was still, you know, packing up. And how do you? How do you treat a game when the game's over? Do you talk to them afterwards or do you like give it 24 hours and then address it that way?
Speaker 3:We'll meet and talk a little bit and there's usually not a lot that says, you know, hitting on a couple of points and we get out of there in five minutes. And if it's not a well-played game, you want to let it set in and just say am I overreacting right here, emotionally or not? In that instance, when we took them over the weight room, no, it was sloppy play and we're going to take care of that right then. And you know, to go to your point on parents, that's a tough one nowadays. I'm lucky I'm in a spot where we have a lot of parental support. They approve of everything we do. They know what we're trying to accomplish with the kids and they see it with all the things we do outside of baseball, with our program to try to build the kid and make him to where he's going to be a productive member of society, a great husband, great father. So at the end of the day, that's the end goal and if it takes us, we got to go do this after the game and that's just what we've got to do Hate losing or love winning, hate losing.
Speaker 3:You know, I don't know exactly why, it's just there's something you didn't do well, the feeling it leaves you now again. We talked about we lost that game 6-5. I didn't have any issue with that. Our guys played well. The other team just had to play a perfect game. They robbed two home runs. I mean, it was just some crazy things happened, wins blowing in with another home run that would have been out. It was one of those games where, hey, it just wasn't our day. But I'm not a big fan of losing. I think there's always a way you can find a way to win.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll put you in a scenario here You're managing an MLB team and I don't know who's your favorite team.
Speaker 3:Gosh, I don't watch a whole lot of MLB anymore, mainly college now.
Speaker 1:Well, hopefully you'll know these guys. Then you get to have these guys on your team and group A or group B. The first group is Ronald Acuna Jr, freddie Freeman, hank Aaron and Ted Williams. The group B would be Juan Soto, bryce Harper, babe Ruth and Barry Bonds.
Speaker 3:I'll go with group B because I love the lefties in the lineup.
Speaker 1:And you got some guys that can swing it pretty good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the power lefty is hard to find, so I'll take that guy any day.
Speaker 1:If you could be hired to coach another sport, what would it be and why?
Speaker 3:Oh gosh, I don't know. I guess football just because of the competitiveness of it. You know it's every Friday night, You've got the lights there, it's really your round now with football too. I think football and baseball are similar mentalities that go with them, so I think that would transfer over well to football.
Speaker 1:Well, Arkansas has a great SEC baseball program and their coaches do a great job. Do you think that it helps in your state to have a, a powerhouse program like that, that the kids can? You know, they, they know. Hey, it's right, it's right here in town.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I mean we've got. You know it's the only show in town really in Arkansas. Now we've got the university of central Arkansas. It's a mile down the road right here too, so that helps a lot also having those guys around. But the state of Arkansas really rallies around the Razorbacks and everybody really grows up being a Razorback fan in Arkansas, so it helps. We've had a couple go up there.
Speaker 1:We've got one on the team right now committed, so it helps and it creates a little bit of excitement throughout the state really and it makes the state better high school wise yeah, well, actually I want to throw one more question at you, with, you know, winning state titles and and uh, being nationally ranked the way I, that's how I came about finding you. How does that, uh, how do the players handle that type of attention?
Speaker 3:I'm going to be honest. You know, coming here I felt like that was kind of an expectation in my mind of where I thought this place could get to. I left a school that would graduate, you know, 250 kids in a year. And so what I did there, you know we graduate 750 a year here. So that's three times the amount of kids.
Speaker 3:So my last year there at Lakeside I just wrote down our lineup, wrote it down a second time, wrote it down a third time. I was like there's your varsity team and I look at them like holy cow. You know we had eight guys who were going to college that year to play college baseball from that team at Lakeside. I was like you got 24 kids on this roster that are about to be able to go play somewhere. It's like it won't ever get to that point. Well, I think we finally got into that point. So you know, in my mind coming here, that was kind of a okay, that's a goal I have. Can we get on the national stage and possibly get ranked nationally throughout this year? We're going through. We haven't lost a game for a while.
Speaker 3:I could feel kind of that cloud of pressure on the kids. It was a lot to go through because we're really still pretty young. We only start two seniors, most of the time heavy with our junior class. So we're going through and we're perfect. You just kind of feel that cloud of being perfect way on them and once we lost that one it kind of felt like it went away. But you know it's just tough to manage. You want to get to that point where you can be perfect, but that's hard to do. It's really hard to do in this game. There's so many good coaches, so many good teams that being able to go through a season without a blemish is really tough. But I told the kids after that game I'm so proud of you. Where you came from, I don't care. We lost this game. I'm so proud of where we're at right now and there's still a lot to be accomplished.
Speaker 1:So Well, it's Leighton Harden, head coach at Conway High School in Arkansas. Coach, thank you for taking the time during your school day to jump on the podcast here with me on Baseball Coaches. Unplugged and hey, best of luck the rest of the way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you. We got a lot left to go. I appreciate you having us on.
Speaker 1:That's a wrap on this episode of Baseball Coaches Unplugged. Big thanks to Coach Leighton Harden for joining us and sharing such valuable insight into mindset, methods and the mission behind Conway Baseball. If you're a coach looking to take your program to the next level, I hope this episode gave you some actionable ideas that you can apply right away. And if you're a parent or an athlete tuning in, you now have a better look at what coaching great coaching looks like behind the scenes. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share the episode with a friend. It helps us to grow. Baseball Coaches Unplugged. You can follow Baseball Coaches Unplugged on X in Instagram at athlete1podcast. Today's episode of Baseball Coaches Unplugged is powered by the netting professionals, improving programs one facility at a time. Contact them today at 844-620-2707 or visit them online at wwwnettingproscom. Until next time, I'm Coach Ken Carpenter and please be sure to check us out every Wednesday where we sit down with elite baseball coaches from around the country. As always. Thanks for listening to Baseball Coaches Unplugged.
