DEXTER – Josh Miller has coached youth baseball enough to learn what the “recipe for success” involves. However, having the right ingredients doesn’t guarantee that everything will turn out well.

“The parents bought into what we were doing,” Miller explained of his experience in coaching the SEMO Titans 7U baseball squad over the past few months. “The kids came out eager to learn and yearned to get better every day.

“That is the recipe for success.”

That formula paid off earlier this month, as the SEMO Titans claimed the Cal Ripken Baseball State Tournament in Scott City with five wins over four days.

“There is only so much the coaching staff can do,” Miller said. “It’s going to take the kid and it is going to take the parents to make it work. And it has.

“This year has been a huge success.”

Winning baseball games is how the Titans ended their season, but it wasn’t necessarily how it began.

“Early on,” Miller said, “we took our lumps in some of these tournaments.”

That was to be expected, given that the Titans had three six-year-olds playing up a year, including Miller’s son, Grady Miller, who was the team’s catcher. But the Titan coaching staff brought a philosophy based on three tenets to every practice and every game, and Miller said the kid’s work ethics eventually paid off.

“This is what we have been led by,” Miller said, “number one, have fun. We’re going to have fun with this. That is why we play the game. We’re here to have fun.”

Miller then added that the second and third foundational pieces to the baseball puzzle were “to play the game the right way,” and “to learn how to compete.”

“There is a lot to that,” Miller explained of the team’s philosophy. “There was a lot of stopping in the middle of practice and teaching.”

Miller also explained that “there was a lot of grace” involved.

“With a seven-year-old,” Miller said, “there is a lot of grace.”

Even in the state tournament, there were moments when Miller and his fellow coaches had to continue to teach lessons that they had repeated ad nauseum all spring and summer (remember, the kids are seven).

“There is a lot of ‘That’s OK, buddy,’” Miller said, “'You’ll get it next time.’”

The Titans got past Sikeston, before narrowly surviving against Scott County by a couple of runs.

Miller and his team were wary of a very good Mineral Area group, but the SEMO Titans topped that squad twice, including in the championship game.

“Mineral Area was the team,” Miller said, “that we knew we were going to have to really play well to beat. We beat them in our pool play game, and then we beat them in the championship.”

Overall, it was a fun year for the kids, according to Miller, where they improved as players, and learned how to compete.

“Those three things are all intertwined,” Miller said, “because the more you learn about the game, and the better you compete at the game, the more fun you are going to have at the game.”