HondaReport.com - The 90-10 Factor

When parents get out of hand, they affect more than their children. They can affect an entire program. Today's culture of selfishness and greed is difficult to deal with, but when parents embrace these tenets, what can a coach do?

This isn't really about football players and their parents, though, like all loving, caring relatives, family members will sometimes wonder (aloud), "Eh. How come Junior isn't playing that much?"

No, this is a question that happens more with indoor sports, where only five or six players can be on the court at one time. Football? You have offense, defense, punt cover, punt return, kick cover, kick return ... lots of opportunities for players to get on the field.

Volleyball is in a different world. So is basketball. That's why, when a prominent player and a longtime coach ran into a problem last season, it was noteworthy. I didn't write up the situation in detail, but I did mention the player's name in a preview story. After all, when a team's best player is no longer with the squad, I'm going to ask why.

As of today, I know a lot more about the background. As a former JV and youth basketball coach (I started when I was 16, for goodness sake!), a referee (yes, I understand that private-school parents are highly demanding, all too well), and a league commissioner (try dealing with grown men who think getting drunk before a game and harassing referees is cool), I know how it is.

All the best intention and management in the world still won't prevent one of today's most prevalent problems: parents who get out of hand.

Case in point: When the aforementioned basketball coach was told by the player on Day 2 of preseason tryouts that the player was leaving for a club volleyball trip to the mainland, he was shocked. The player had already missed all of the program's off-season conditioning workouts in favor of club volleyball. And worse yet, the player and the parents expected the coach to hold down a spot on the roster for the kid. He said, "No. You leave now, you won't be on the team."

That may seem a bit unfair, but really, a coach must be fair to his entire team. What if half of the returning players asked for the same special treatment? How is a coach going to manage a functioning program when players come and go as they please. This player made volleyball a top priority year-round, yet expected favors from the high school basketball coach.

Preposterous. Even more ridiculous is the fact that the parents got upset. When they returned from the mainland, they expected the coach to allow their child back onto the basketball team. Of course, he said, "No." Again. And that was the end of it.

Well, not really. These parents went around his back and tried to initiate trouble for him through other parents. How would Mahatma Gandhi deal with belligerent, greedy parents? Martin Luther King? He might have had a cow. But both would have, in the end, done the same thing. They were revolutionary individuals who strove for peace, but dealing with irrationality requires strength in the face of anger. Discipline over emotion.

Fortunately, the season went on and the team survived without the kid who bailed out on Day 2.

What behooves us all to wake up and recognize this kind of selfish, boorish behavior is that there is no sense of balanced perspective coming from many parents these days. This coach told me that overall, 90 percent of his parents were good, but that the other 10 percent were big-time troublemakers.

He even had to deal with a drunk parent who challenged him after a game, yelling "How come my kid isn't playing more?"

I've been there. When I coached JV basketball, there were three uncles of one of my players who caused occasional problems. The worst was at a tournament when they walked right through the door without paying a cent. After the game, one of them told me, from behind, "Coach, you suck!"

The nephew, who was one of our best players, was standing there with me, talking. He was stunned and embarrassed. A very good kid who happened to have some rotten apples for uncles. I saved him further embarrassment by ignoring the uncle and continuing to talk with him.

I feel for coaches and admins who have to deal with society as it is today. Traffic is worse, congestion is making us miserable. Sure, we live in "paradise," but this island was never meant to host 1.2 million people. Wild animals attack each other, even kill offspring when territory shrinks and droughts destroy the natural order. We're not much different.

We, at least, have free will. Even after a rough day at work, long hours in lines at the market, the bank, in fruitless meetings, and more traffic on the way home, does it give parents the right to bully coaches around? Just because hundreds, even thousands of dollars are spent trying to overcompensate for the lost time with our children, does that mean club sports are more important than high school programs?

Does all the stress in our world justify telling a high school coach that he should save a spot for a player who up and out of the blue leaves for a week to play in a club tournament on the mainland? The problem could have been avoided if the player's parents had told the coach about the trip much, much earlier. He said he would have consented if there had been communication in the off-season. However, the player was not around in the off-season, apparently because club volleyball was the only objective.

No phone calls to the coach, none to the AD. And then woila, the player takes off on the second day of preseason while the rest of the team is still going through tryouts.

Stress is one thing, but for parents to support this kind of yo-yo behavior is symptomatic of the culture we live in. When parents are going 100 mph through life, they often forget that kids don't need that kind of speed. Kids will flourish going 50 mph, or even just 15 mph. Club sports are fantastic, but if the commitment to a single sport is that strong, stick with it. Communicate with the high school coaches well ahead of time. They'll understand. They'll try to accommodate. They want their players to return.

Unfortunately, for this player, the lesson is simple and sour: Treat the non-volleyball coach without proper respect, without adequate communication. All that matters is the trip, the money spent, and volleyball. Coach is supposed to give you special treatment. After all, you're the best player on the team.

That bone-headed approach is working more and more in this world. Maybe it's the way of a free society. Maybe it's the norm for a greedy culture. Take, take, take. Fine. But in this case, the principal and athletic director stood strong behind their coach. The player was not permitted back onto the team. When the parents went and grumbled, trying to bring him down by gossiping to other parents, they showed their true colors.

The basic rule for good coaches is to prune the rot off your tree — your team — before it infects the other branches. Parents like those aren't needed, wanted or worth saving a relationship over. It was painful for the coach, but in the end, the right thing was done.

I just hope the player realizes one day that the coach did the right thing. I'm not holding my breath with this hope, but sometimes parents don't even realize what they're doing in the midst of foolishness. Sometimes children are the first to realize the errors of their parents' ways. So that is my hope, bleak as it seems.