Ok . . . you’ve just watched the girl who starts over your daughter put the eighth straight set she’s received into the net yet the girl stays in OR you’ve just watched the guard on the opposing team put a sixth straight move on the boy who starts over your son for an easy lay-up and yet, the boy stays in OR you just watched the kid who starts pitching over your child give up the sixth straight run of the inning, oh and he did this in most of his previous starts as well, and yet, this same kid will be in the starting rotation a few days from now. And, yes, you’re watching this while also watching your child sit the bench. Your child is cheering. . . .supporting the team . . . supporting his/her team-mate . . . but you KNOW what's aching in your kid’s heart.“Why can’t I get in there? Why can’t I play?”
I really am seeking answers in response to this blog entry. Have any of you gotten any answers from the coach when you’ve seen this kind of practice on game-day after game-day?To make matters worse, have any of you seen performances like the ones I mentioned above in practices where these performances are counter-balanced by your child’s performance (where you child is NOT hitting it into the net or not getting easily beat on the low post, or not giving up hit after hit) AND you’ve been told, your child’s been told, that playing time is earned in practice?!?What do you do when your heart AND brain just can’t reconcile what you see on game day AND in practices from starters and from what you see from your child in practices and when they do get their small bit of time on the court or on the field?Our time with club and even high school sports have led us into the belief system that, really, the coach is GOD. And . . . .you don’t question GOD.
Most coaches will give lip service to some standard of handling complaints or grievances. As many of you know, it works like this: if the athlete is having a problem with some issue on the team (and I would guess MOST problems would revolve around playing time) then the athlete is to approach the coach for discussion. My family has lived through everything I described above and we have followed the rules laid down by the sports gods . . .i.e. . . . .coaches. My daughter has gone to her coaches asking how she can get on the court (volleyball). Each time (probably a total of 6-7-8 approaches) she gotten the answer that she needs to be MORE CONSISTENT in order to earn more play time. Yes . . . .really . . . .more consistent was the response by the coach! So in my daughter’s head, as she goes back to the bench she’s left to wonder . . . “Gee coach, more consistent than Susie’s eight straight into the net . . .or hitting out-of-bounds? Weren’t you watching practice when I put 8 out of 10 down in bounds and Susie put in 2 out ten? How much more consistent should I be. . . . CAN I be?”
When your child goes through the scenario I describe above maybe a few times during the course of the season and the coach does NOTHING to right the wrong (and may even take some additional emotional retribution out on your kid), what do you do?When do YOU get involved?How have you gotten involved and what was the result? Can anyone reading this report good outcomes?When this kind of thing goes on, just in case there are any coaches reading this, you’ve GOT to know that the child you’re benching . . . .seeing how your starter is performing . . . is just sitting there wondering . . .”Gee . . .does Coach think I’d really do worse than Susie/Johnny’s doing right now?”And you’ve also got you us parents on the sidelines are wondering” What has that girl’s/boy’s family done for/given to this coach to get this kind of treatment for their child? “ “ Has money changed hands (beyond regular dues payments)?”]
Most adults making it into their 30’s and 40’s and 50’s aren’t idiots. We’re pretty good at recognizing when something looks (and smells) rotten! Nobody is being fooled . . . .so, my question is . . .how do we let coaches who’ll engage in this type of behavior know that we’re on to them and we’d really like them to do one of two things . . . .1) stop it and act honorably . . .especially since this involves children or 2) get out of youth sports. This is a field that requires a certain level of character development that you just don’t possess. I look forward to your responses!
Politics and Emotional Abuse
One of the reasons that I began MomsTeam ten years ago was because of the emotional injury during sports that I had witnessed to so many children as I was raising my three sons. What you are describing is emotional abuse! Over the past ten years that MomsTeam has been running we get more questions about this very situation than any other. It is about Politics.
The answer is not easy and is different from case to case—town to town. I am often called into towns to consult with individuals or entire leagues and see that each case his at the core the same—coaches abusing their authority with no respect for the emotional well being of the child. MomsTeam has many many articles in the POLITICS Center (which is found in the Successful Parenting Channel) that speak to setting up a more fair program and ways to handle these situations. I also write extensively about politics in my book HOME TEAM ADVANTAGE and provide many solutions. I suggest taking some time to read all of the articles and select a few to pass around.
We built MomsTeam so parents would share it with others, especially parents on the teams that your children play on. Three of the more popular articles: 1) The Team Charter - Blueprint for a Hassle-Free Season 2) Selecting All-Star Teams: A Better, Fairer Way. Parents who share them-the more we see certain coaches and clubs clean up their acts. 3) Reforming Youth Sports: Community, Grass-Roots Parent Activism Needed.
Another thing to keep in mind - as I speak with groups all across the country, I have come to realize that frankly, the ones with the least amount of politics, have women involved from the top down (board of directors, coaches, managers) more than other towns. Most women are born nurturers and we see the majority of women coaches treat all children equally and fairly. Hope this has helped.
Brooke de Lench
Publisher /Editor In Chief
MomsTeam.com
Author:
Home Team Advantage: The Critical Role of Mothers in Youth Sports (Harper Collins)
Approaching Abusive Coaches - Post No. 2
Brooke – thanks for your insights. Your work and writings give people like me hope that maybe someday, SOMETHING can happen to right these wrongs. Right now, as you and I have alluded to in some past posts, only money will make some of these “integrity challenged” clubs and coaches change their ways. Unfortunately, for as many emotionally devastated children there are who are leaving youth club sports after a year or two of abuse, there are more than enough children/families willing to stand in line, write checks, try-out, be offered a slot/position, and then believe the lies the club/coach tells them about how playing time will be given out based upon performance in practices. As long as that pipeline remains semi-full of gullible parents and talented players (just not talented enough to get some court/field time from the starters) these clubs can keep their mis-deeds going. Yes, they’ll lose a boy or girl at the end of the season who, as much as they love the sport, just can’t take the emotional anguish of the bench anymore. But these clubs know there’s going to be another mom and dad and athlete there on try-out day with checkbooks in their hands and hope in their hearts that they be treated fairly, like human beings, and that’s all the club needs to keep this horrific game going.
As far as this part of my blog goes, I’d really like to know what readers have done in approaching the coach . . . especially if you’ve been successful in getting the coach to see things your way . . . even a little bit!
Here’s what we did.
The practice season prior to meaningful games in the club season revealed exactly what we knew on try-out day . . .that my daughter was probably 4th-5th-6th – 7th best on her club team. . . somewhere in there. Practice proved it and several parents (not the ones with the inside “dirty” deals) would continually remark to me and my wife how well my daughter was playing. As real games approached I assumed that the coach would live up to her words of playing girls who showed her good things in practice on game days. Well . . .she didn’t and she really couldn’t given the REAL promise that either she or some other members of club had made to about four families MONTHS prior to try-outs – that is, that if these families moved their girls over to my daughter’s club that their girls would 1) make the team (try-outs were really a formality for these families) 2) their girls would start and 3) their girls would never come off the court outside of injury and illness. I believe a primary motive in these promises being made to these families was that these girls had played in the previous season for what most folks in my area consider to the premier volleyball club. This club is constantly looking for new, better (and in volleyball), TALLER girls. They assume, and probably correctly so, that every girl (and every parent) wants to play for them. So my daughter’s club had been “raided” on several occasions by this other club and they had lost some good players over the years. My daughter’s club was just dying, just ACHING to return the favor of “stealing” girls from the “premier” club. What I marveled at as I watched my daughter’s club conduct their “smoky back-room” deals was how they never seemed to acknowledge that the girls they were “stealing” away were girls who were being told – either subtly or directly- that they were going to be “on the bubble” for dropping down to a lesser team or perhaps just being cut outright by the premier club!! In other words, these girls WEREN’T the super-stars of their teams! The dynamic just didn’t work that way. The premier club got to steal our super-stars. We got to steal the girls (from them) that were looking at demotions or cuts. Not quite the “prizes” to be “stolen” . . huh? Best I can figure. . . our club coaches/administrators were just too meshed in their rapture over getting girls who HAD played for this club that they really could see the essence of the deal they were getting. I’m sure it may have even surprised these families and their daughters! One minute you got the club your kid has played on for a couple of years telling you they might not have a place for your child next year, and the next, after making some investigatory phone calls to the number two club in the area . . .you find that club is treating you and your girl like ROYALTY – like they’re a NBA team courting your free agent LeBron James! I’m guessing such treatment could get you a little punch-drunk . . . .a little “full” of yourself and your kid’s abilities!
So with that background (revealed to me later in the season by one of the PARENTS who got the pre-season deal) you can all see that there really wasn’t much of a chance that the coach would live up to her promise to me that she would be objective in viewing practices and play the girls accordingly. When you couple that background with some of the other dynamics of volleyball – 1) girls DON’T get exhausted in the course of a game to where physical exhaustion would force the coach’s hand to make a substitution and 2) if you have marginal players, but ones you or your club has made HUGE promises to even before try-outs – with six on the court – 2 to 3 strong players could probably “carry” 3-4 “ok” players and you could probably still win (which is what this club sport is ALL about as that validates YOU as the coach with your training/playing philosophy i.e. “How could I be questioned or have someone cast doubts on how I run things . .. .I’m WINNING!) . . . I’m sure you can see just how many cards were stacked up against my daughter in terms of her chances of being treated fairly and with dignity.
So, a couple of weekends into the season my daughter and me and my wife knew what we were up against. We followed the club’s hand-book and my daughter approached the coach to ask about playing time, because, keep in mind now, NOTHING in practice would make anyone who is even slightly objective about what they would see there think that any ONE of these girls should get 99.9% of the playing time while other girls should get less than 1%!!
As I alluded to in my first post in this blog, she was told that she had to be more consistent!! Yes . . . .really . . .that’s what she was told . . .with that much detail. Any of you who’ve even been a little in my shoes knows that that response of “being more consistent” to a child asking about playing time is a complete and total COP-OUT. Only coaches who 1) kinda do look at themselves as gods 2) know that the child asking about getting more play time is pretty much just as good as the kid you’re giving ALL the playing time to, but 3) you threw in the ULTIMATE clause into your team’s hand-book to free you from the “pesky” job of treating all your players with dignity and respect – and that is the clause that a player (and his/her parents) NEVER, NEVER, NEVER-EVER talks in a derogatory way about another player on the team - oh, and you, as coach, get to define what derogatory is . . . .would ever dare to use the “be more consistent” line at a child asking for more play time.
The beauty of number 3 above (to an abusive club coach) is that by demanding adherence to this clause you take away 99.9% of the ammunition the benched player (and his/her family) has in making their case to you. Really, truly, honestly . . . how can you, as a benched player, even begin to argue for more play time unless you make the case that the player starting over SHOULD NOT get as much play time as she currently does? My daughter did her level best to point out that her play in practice was just as good – in her honest opinion ( and then she faltered . . .what could she say next .. . .”better than Susie’s?” – hey that’s DEROGATORY talk! ) as the other girl’s play and the coach did slap her down with the number three clause!! She went back to the bench and kept doing her best.
She asked two more times and asked for specific details on maybe getting some metrics ( i.e. if I do this, this many times – could I play more?”) vs. the nebulous “be more consistent” but was never given any. The final time she asked was when the six starters who never came out began to falter and began losing to teams (that substituted more girls in) that they used to beat and they began falling in the standings. Even faced with pretty poor play that lasted the remainder of the season and resulted in the team sinking to ranking levels dramatically below where the team usually played – this coach would NOT put in the other3-4 girls that had been benched all season.
After the last time my daughter approached the coach , I approached the coach with what I thought was an excellent plan to help my girl restore some self-esteem with what remained of the season. I’d like your thoughts on what I did after I detail it all to you. I’ll do that in my next posting.