Sports Parents, Here’s What Coaches Want You To Know

Last updated on: September 9, 2021 at 4:00 am by Shaunti Feldhahn

Sports Parents, Here’s What Coaches Want You To Know 2021-09-08T16:41:55-04:00 Shaunti Feldhahn

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Trust the coach’s decisions and strategy, even if you don’t understand it, rather than defaulting to a mindset of suspicion and fostering that suspicion in your child.

Coaches have many, many different reasons for what they do that parents will not always understand. In part because parents don’t have access to all the information the coaches do, and in part because we are all just different: two different people in the exact same situation might value or decide different things.

All the parents agreed that they shouldn’t accept truly dangerous or abusive behavior. (For example, one coach mentioned a parent who rightly alerted them to an assistant coach’s practice of withholding water breaks as a form of discipline.) But in most cases, the coach needs to be able to make decisions, to experiment, and to do what they believe is best for the team without worrying that parents will be on the phone the next day or rolling their eyes with their kids.

One junior varsity coach told me, “In rec leagues and club sports there is a lot of focusing on drills. It is simply easier, when you have a large number of students, to focus on drills and say, ‘This is the best way to build skills.’ But actually, as long as you have a decent skill base of some kind, we try to minimize the drills and actually do gameplay. It is messy and ugly and chaotic . . . and that’s what the real games often look like! So if we train that way, then when ugliness happens in the game, the students are used to it. But every year I get phone calls from parents whose students played in county leagues or club sports, saying ‘My child is not getting enough of the practice they need to compete, because you’re not running enough drills!’ and I have to spend time on the phone explaining why we do it this way, and encouraging them to not join in with their student when they second guess us. Our students end up being far more prepared because they are not thrown by the tempo and chaos of the games, so eventually the parents come and say, ‘Oh I get it.’ But it is frustrating to have to spend those hours on the front end because the parents default to thinking I’m crazy, rather than the parents defaulting to a position of trust that there IS a reason I’m doing this.”

Support the coach even when your child is upset with them, rather than undermining not just the coach but the team.

Coaches make mistakes just like everyone else. The difference is that a coach needs everyone to follow them, despite mistakes and disagreements, in order for the team as a whole to have the best chance of success . . . whether that means success on the field or success in building the life character of the student athletes.

I heard about one varsity coach whose central starting player did not take direction well. This player was extremely talented, but sometimes ignored the coach’s explicit directions. The next time it happened, the coach benched the player for the rest of the game, which put the game in jeopardy. The player furiously complained to the parent, and the coach was thrilled to hear the parent say, “It was YOU that put the game in jeopardy.”

Another coach told me, “It makes all the difference if the parents decide to trust my decisions, and support me behind my back. Coaches are supposed to be completely unbiased toward all kids, all players, and be team focused. Coaches try as best we can to do what is best for the team. Parents don’t mean to be biased toward their kids, but they are.”

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