Hey Parents, Lighten Up on the Coaches!

“Hello, my name is Mike Bertok and I have a few announcements. The first is that your son will not be a professional football player next year. So, we will not coach him, or this team, as if they will be turning pro next year. It’s okay if they dream about it, but we are going to prepare them for high school football.”

Those were my opening comments at our eighth-grade parent meeting in my fourteenth and final season as a football coach. Had a spectacular time. Met a lot of wonderful people, some becoming lifelong friends. Repeatedly had respectful, great kids, from great families. Was really bummed when it ended.

The parents, of whom 99.5% or so were terrific and supportive, regardless of the success of the team, also added to the experience. We were invited into their homes for parties and dinners and contacted years later for graduations. It was truly an honor. For them, I am eternally grateful.

One day, I will dedicate a column to the coaching experience and how good it was.

For this one, though, there is that other .5%.

They are the ones who, unfortunately, stand out. You know them. They scream ignorant comments from the stands. They are very brave when directing negative comments at a coaches’ back or while they are in a dugout. Sometimes they get personal. They are usually the same ones that berate referees and umpires also. Hint – this does not help your kid’s team.

They sometimes become confrontational, often with bad timing, like before or after a game. Emotions can run high at a sporting event and trying to ram home your point without being able to think clearly can devolve into a bad scene. Hint #2 – this often embarrasses children of those parents. I once had a player comment that we would have a good game because his father would not be there. How sad.

So, since some parents so doggedly yearn for an audience, how about a way to give them one?

I am going to print their names! After thirty plus seasons of coaching multiple sports, I can produce a short, but stand-out list.

It is likely that there have been difficult parents since the beginning of youth sports. In my personal experience as a player, though, I do not remember any big issues. Can’t recall any of my coaches getting harassed or fighting with unhappy parents.

But some parents today cannot accept that their child is not a star, even if they are a great kid or an extremely hard worker, which is far more important. Some will never agree that value can be found in a loss. It does not mean that you don’t try hard to win, all the time. But if you don’t, the sun will still rise the next morning.

I find it disturbing how often a nine-year old little league game can find its way onto the ten o’clock news because of brawling adults. It is not isolated. YouTube has an endless selection. Every sport in every age group is represented by a parent attacking a coach, referee, or another parent. Shockingly, there are incidents of parents striking players. It is likely that most coaches, at some point, will have to deal with some version of this.

After the final game of a difficult football season, parents from both teams got into an altercation on the high school football field where we played. Police were there within minutes, however, they drove right past the field and went directly into the high school gym, where they assumed the fight was at the homecoming dance. Nope, the kids were fine. It was the grown-ups that caused the problems.

This issue has gotten so bad that many youth leagues require parents to sign a code of conduct agreement. In other words, mom and dad must promise not to act like jerks. How pathetic. How do parents expect their children to behave when they cannot control themselves? Hint #3 – Most other parents do not want to listen to non-stop badgering. They want to enjoy the game.

Back to their names. This is going to be fun!

But, of course, I would never print actual names. Not because of a potential lawsuit, (well maybe because of a potential lawsuit) but because people should not be treated that way, even jerks. However, if I did, maybe some folks would get the chance to know how it feels to be railed on, sometimes with your spouse and kids having to witness it.

My point? As important as it may seem at the time, stats and records at the youth level don’t matter. No varsity high school coach cares if a fifth grader batted over .400. No college coach cares if a seventh grader scored five goals in a game. There are occasional stories about an eighth-grade kid or high school freshman being recruited by a college, but those are the extreme elite athletes and the exceptions that prove the rule.

In high school, it is true that individual performance matters for college recruitment. However, after being around two eras of high school athletes, most would agree that comments from the stands either are not heard, or are not important.

Therefore, back off the coaches. If you need to be vocal, cheer for your team. Or take a minute to thank them for the countless hours they put in so that your kid can play.

This column originally appeared in the Times, a Shaw publication.