Last night a received an email from a parent of a kid I coach. I won’t repeat everything here but it came down to this quote, “Some kids are losing interest…This is not the NFL” The central argument was that I focus on a handful of players in practice and games and ignore the rest. It struck me as ironic, given the past year of tackle football and my straight up pledge not to do so. After a moment I stopped and tried to figure out who sent it. Turns out it was a dad whose kid is always getting opportunities to touch the ball–so much so that I’ve consciously had to scale back on his touches. So, I get it.
This is about a dad trying to act like its not about his kid when it really is.
So, I got mad. Listen, its one thing for me to be upset because my kid is being put in a untenable position and then offer to help in any way possible. It is an entirely different thing for a parent to complain, act like this is about the entire team (when it isn’t) and then not offer to do anything but continue complaining. So, I offered him the chance to coach the team.
This is a volunteer gig for me and one that I am starting to enjoy less and less due to the way parents get involved. I have three teams and two of them are an absolute joy. I love the youngest because of the kids. 6-7 year olds are getting out there and having fun, and the kids who might not be the most athletic are making the most of their chances and doing big things that encourage them to want to do more. 8-9 is unfortunately much more about winning, but the 9 kids on that team are really coming together and have a great time with one another. There is no beef about playing time or opportunities other than the ones that come from me, because I see some kids really doing great things in practice and unable to execute that in the game.
The parents are, in general, the issue in all of these situations. Especially on a team where nobody wants to help out and nobody wants to sign up for snacks or a team party, but people feel free to complain.
There has to be some meaning in this experience, said my buddhist self. My best gal concurred when I told her. I still struggle to find that meaning. Perhaps this is meant to show me that the experience that my boys went through was more complicated than what I saw on the surface; that the on and off field work of a volunteer is complex and thankless and both sides have to exert an enormous amount of trust and patience for things to be good.
Or maybe it is just a reminder that haters gonna hate.