Coaching and Youth Sports

this is what i get for volunteering. learned my lesson

 

I laugh only because I 100% know what you are going through.

 

ha, i know. it's just annoying when it takes time away from other shit. also one of the other board members has been [itch bay]ing a lot to me too despite the fact i sent him the schedule to review and he said it looked great. it's one thing if you are dealing with this type of stuff when you are being paid for it.

 

I’ve got a couple of kids on my team who played in a baseball tournament a few weeks ago, and I went to watch them play.

Was amazed at parents coaching from the stands, yelling at the ump, [itch bay]ing, moaning, incessantly and loudly talking in giant gaggles.

Plus, they all just seemed....I don’t know...sort of weird? Odd? Helicopter-y? Too serious? Like yelling for a kid to choke up “x” inches on the bat, and would change the measurement in between pitches. Explicit instruction sort of shit.

Definitely more of an odd lot than football, and even soccer parents.

I couldn’t sit there for a whole game and ended up moving to sit near the outfield. Couldn’t take a whole season of that nonsense.

 

This is why I coach or stand on the fence in centerfield.

 

I understand that people want to help their kids. I understand that parents get over stimulated and can't help but involve themselves. I get it; I sometimes fight it in myself, especially when coaching.

But here is the thing that irks me about it: it is probably only mildly irritating to the kid as a person, but it is often harmful to the kid's performance. A hitter doesn't need correction on every swing. His feet and his hands and his head and his hips and his stance Don't need to be tweaked at the same time. It frustrates and confuses the player, it applies pressure when there is already enough, and it erodes confidence. And that's true when the parent is saying the right stuff, and they often aren't.

I'm a big believer that an athlete can work on improving about one thing at a time. And I'm a big believer that almost all of that improvement comes in practice. If I can give a player a single swing thought during a game that reminds him of what we worked on in practice, I will try to do it, but everything else should be words of encouragement. Otherwise, the best thing you can usually do is leave the kid alone and let him play.

 

it's funny you say that because i know a guy who coaches hs football and is one of my baseball coaches and he says baseball is night and day worse. maybe it's been right on top of the kids. i dont' know. the big problem is these parents are many times giving incorrect or conflicting information which just screws up the kids. every year i give a speech that essentially says during a game i don't want anything but positive cheering from the parents. i explain they very well might be right and i'm wrong, but the time to discuss that is after a game. most get it. some don't and need to be reminded.

 

i agree 100%.

it's amazing how many coaches i see who chose to give advice to kids after every swing. and screaming at them that they swung at a pitch over their heads isn't helpful advice. the kids knows this and you can see them visibly tighten up sometimes.

 

Its joysticking. Let the kids figure it out. If they look at a parent or even coach for reaction during or after a play, its an issue. Play ball

 

I can't speak to football. Maybe the numbers or helmets help. Soccer is just as bad as baseball, and so is basketball. Golf would be if they let the parents talk. My limited experience with swimming is that it's the same.

 

I can't speak to football. Maybe the numbers or helmets help. Soccer is just as bad as baseball, and so is basketball. Golf would be if they let the parents talk. My limited experience with swimming is that it's the same.

 

When we were in soccer pretty heavy most teams parents were nuts. Our coaches and club didnt allow it and actually suspended parents at times.

 

i attended one of my friend's kids soccer game. the girl is on a travel team and plays year round and this was some sort of tournament. much of the parents spent an awful lot of time complaining about the other team and fair officiating to the refs. that type of stuff would not be allowed by parents in my kid's baseball league.

 

Mine are older now but I coached them all from age 4-12. Im sure some parents didnt like it and had a couple leave midseason but most kids did fine and most parents got it. Biggest runin I had was a couple who told me i was throwing it too fast, from a knee mind you, and didnt give their son time to react. Every other kid pinging it as first year or 2 coach pitch is basically get them swinging thru the ball and look at it. Kids Dad got mad when I suggested slow pitch softball after the 3rd time they threatened to quit.
I miss 2 things mainly. The kids' faces when they hit the ball and finding the natural lefty or 2 who comes up hacking righty. I started every year by having the kids pick up a bat and ball and swing\throw it rt and left. There was always a hidden sweet swinging lefty in there.

 

I poke at baseball’s expense, but it really was an odd sort of deal. I’m certain that you can find billions of examples of equally odd football parents, or worse, but it was literally several parents...maybe a dozen in the section I was sitting in, and on every single pitch / play. At first, I thought it was just general crowd chatter (Come on, Brooklyn! Watch the ball, Elwood!, etc.), but I realized that it was intricate and incessant instruction, and to every player, on every play, the longer I sat there.

I think it absolutely has something to do with the close proximity of parents to the dugout / home plate / field, and the lack of equipment. It’s easier to ignore people in a helmet and face mask, IMO. We’re really are far removed in football, so maybe those parents would do the same, but no one can hear it.

And they were really, really into their kids specific individual performance....and in a much more critical / helicopter parent sort of way, than anything I’ve experienced in football and very limited interactions with soccer.

 

the coach should invite the parents who think they know what they are doing to coach. it's also on the coach to make sure the parents know that this type of advice during games is unwelcome. i have zero problem saying this, but i'm kind of an asshole. ha ha

 

It wasnt as much me coaching my son as it was making sure he didnt get some guy like we got 1 year in basketball when i couldnt and another baseball one.
Basketball coach played 4 v 4 with them and scored all the points in the first practice I saw.
Baseball coach hit a kid in the face and next one in the nuts. Looked like an SNL skit. He was a nervous wreck and i jokingly said i'll go out there for you and he pulled himself from a coach pitch game after a few batters. Never seen anything like it

 

This is exactly why I started coaching, too. Not because I thought I was the best, but because I knew that I wasn’t the worst, and at least wasn’t bat shit crazy.

My oldest son’s first tackle coach “didn’t believe” in having an offensive philosophy, and would instead carry a little white board & marker into every offensive huddle, so as to draw up each play.

First drive of the first game, we scored a long TD run on a broken play (go figure), and I remember thinking that this was easy and maybe this guy had it figured out, afterall.

That was the only TD we scored. Not just in that game, but all season.

We considered it a victory if they didn’t beat us so bad as to get the mercy rule (28+ pt lead at end of the 3rd meant you didn’t play the 4th quarter, IIRC) applied.

I’ve been doing it ever since. That was 9 years ago, between my oldest son’s team and my youngest son’s. I’m like a pig in shit, and love it, even when it sucks, and for all the reasons you mentioned.

I’ve got a kid on my team who lost his dad to cancer last year about this time, and his mom told me that she only signed him up to play because he misses having a male figure in his life, and thought that we could be that for him. Oh, he’s terrible, and I tell him that several times each practice or game. Because if you can’t perform, I’ve got no time for you, snowflake. WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD, SON!

I’ve got the adopted kid from Columbia, who I’ve talked about on here before.

I had my first multi-racial kid sign up this year, but I don’t know his name, having never taken the time to learn it.

I also had another black kid play for me this year, too - and which is no small feat in my neck of the woods. Kid is as genuinely nice as any human I’ve ever met. He plays on the line, and he’ll routinely reach across the line of scrimmage to slap the hand of the kid in front of him, usually right before the ball snaps. They’ve never called him for it, probably because of my white privilege.

I hesitate to tell this....for fear of offending anyone, or being seen as a hypocrite for my recent argument with people about racist content....but it’s pretty funny (to me, and now, looking back on it) and I swear it’s 100% true.

So we go to play a bowl game (think organized scrimmage that doesn’t count) on a Saturday, and at a school in a predominantly black neighborhood. I literally have less than 5 kids of color on my team, and the rest are white. I can’t control who lives in my community, so it is what it is. So, we play this game against a predominantly black team, and somehow manage to lose. I’ve got the kids huddled up in the middle of the field (away from parents, per the norm) for the post-game stuff, and the other team we just played were huddle up about 10-15 yards away from us...except they were surrounded by their parents, because it’s their home field. I’m trying to tell them what we did wrong, need to improve upon, but not crush them, and to get them hyped for the next game, a few days later. So, I said something like, “We’re going to keep working and getting better, and we’re going to be ready to beat Team X for our next game (our next opponent).

Then I’m wrapping up by pointing at random kids around the huddle, trying to end it on a high and light note, and by asking, “What do you think we’re going to do to Team X, Bobby?” who responds, “We’re going to whip them!”. The next kid says, “We’re going to win!”, so on and so forth. After 3 or so kids, they’re pretty fired up and are getting louder and louder with each kid.

So, I next point to one of my kids of color, and ask the same, and he responds by screaming,

“WE’RE GOING TO MAKE THEM OUR SLAVES!”

I immediately interjected with, “No, no, no!!” - but the rest of the team is just dying laughing, because they love this kid, understand how nice he is, but how wildly inappropriate that comment was, and because they’re young boys.

The other team and parents must have heard him because when I stood up, there were just looks of perplexed disdain, and complete silence, as every eye was on me / my team. So, I had to quickly break the huddle and go over to explain and apologize.

I then go to player’s mom and dad, who are each the nicest salt-of-the-earth people, to tell them what happened and to ask WTF....and they just died laughing, too. They are devout Christians, and asked why he said that, and he explained that he had recently learned about the Israelite slaves being “beaten” by their Egyptian captors in his after-school religious program.

Hence, his comment of choice as it related to our “beating” our next opponent. So, there’s that.

 

This is when I forward the previous response to the person and ask them to please confirm that they changed their mind and/or were previously full of shit.

 

I’m grateful that I when I played travel ball we didn’t have any of that nonsense with parents. Our coaches would run off anybody whose parents couldn’t keep their mouths shut or interfered.