ATF_Butcher

this is my first year actually coaching a travel team and i have to say that some of these parents are driving me insane. the day of our state tournament,which is today, i had an imature parent pull her two daughters off the team leaving me with 8 girls. one of her daughters is not very good, but the other is an all star. it was one of those deals that if you want one you have to take both so the other coach and myself decide to pick them both up. anyway she decided that the week of the state tournament, being this week, that the girls didn't need to practice i guess. she missed three practices and left early on the other two. so with us only having nine players due to one girl being out of town, we had to pick up another player. the player we picked up is very good. we told the imature parent that we was going to start both girls, but one would be a flex player. in other words she wouldn't bat. she hasn't hit the ball all year. the plaeyer we picked up is a very good hitter. well she said that was fine. come to find out today she pulled the girls and wasn't even going to call us and let us know. we start the tournament tonight and we had to shuffle to find another player. the bad part is the divorced father is a very good friend of mine and the mothers actions have pretty much made me decide not to ever pick these girls up again. she is a very hateful person who loves to stir up trouble.

is this typicall of parents? i swear this is worse than running my company i think.


sorry for the rant....

Comp

Get used to it. Every pitchers parent thinks their kid is the #1 pitcher, and if they dont get the pitching time they think they deserve, they will go somewhere else. Same goes for every other position. Many parents think their kids are better than they actually are, and will jump teams at the drop of a hat if they feel they will get better playing time, better position etc.

No one seems to have any commitment anymore. I always explained to my daughter that when you make a commitment to play for a team, you have to honor it. You have 11, 12, 13 or more other girls depening on you to play your position and do your job for the whole organization. That means parties come 2nd, boyfriends come 2nd, everything except school work comes 2nd. That also includes practices. I dont care how good a player may be, if they dont practice, they shouldnt play. Now, that being said, I would also not keep my daughter on a team where I thought she was being misstreated. Did that once, will never do it again.

While it sucks, take comfort in knowing that there are only so many travel teams in your area. Once they have jumped ship a few times they will be known as team jumpers and none of the other coaches will want to deal with them. I have also seen way too many times, these girls and parents that thinkg their daughters are too good to practice, are the ones that 1 or 2 years down the line are no longer the studs they once were and are now the bench sitters.

softball33

What age are you coaching? At the younger ages there seems to be a lot of shuffling around here among the more competitive teams. Some of it is honest concern on the parents' part to make sure their daughter is getting the time they need. Some of it is trophy hunting. My daughter has always been the #1 pitcher on all of her teams. If there were two pitchers that were very close in ability, it wouldn't be unusual to see one of them leave to get more mound time. I also know that if we switched teams then at least one of their other pitchers may go to another team that needs pitching. That may not be right, but it happens.
This doesn't seem to be the case here. ALWAYS make it very clear what your policies are regarding picking up players and playing time in general. I always told my team that if I pick up a player it's because I need that player and therefore that player will probably play as much or more than some who are already on the team.

halskinner

Are you certain it isnt the way you hold practice that has set her off???

Sounds like you were practicing 5 times a week. For that practice schedule, you had better impress the heck out of me as a coach.

Someone was obviously feeding some 2nd hand info about them and their intentions, are you sure that person is reliable??

baseballplussoftball.com

Part of coaching. When I coached teams, I often recruited based on parents as much as player's abilities.

Marc Dagenais

I wrote a post on how to deal with parents a few weeks ago on my blog. That might be of interest to you.

Here is the link:
Coaching Softball - How to Build Relationships With Parents

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Marc Dagenais is a softball peak performance coach that helps players be more confident, mentally tougher, hit with more power, run faster, throw harder, and be more dominant on the field. He also helps coaches win more games and get more out of their team.

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Rocket Eagle

The summer organization I work with also recruits parents as much as players - we have passed on many players because either the player or the parent(s) had attitudes.

Unfortunately some parents make bad decisions and set bad examples - though it's usually simply a case of over-protection. Most parents want their kids to succeed so badly that they shift the "blame" for on-field failures to the coach or the program.

Coaches HAVE to be fair of course - and if you set any expectations that you don't follow through on, you are asking for - and deserve - to have problems. The best way to deal with parents is to diffuse them - by setting expectations up front. The very first team get-together should be a meeting with parents and players and coaches. I always have a handout to go over in which I set my expectations for players AND for parents, and just as importantly I also describe what they can expect from me. How playing time is split up, how practice attendance affects playing time, etc., etc. I've done this for years, and I have had virtually no issues with parents - in nearly 30 years of coaching.

ATF_Butcher

yeah this is more the direction i am going to head in the future.

the team is 10u. it was not a pitching issue at all. the one thing about it the all star team was going to pick up the one twin, but not the other. my daughter was going to be on the all star team and the other coaches daughter also. our daughters are nine. we told the mother what was going to happen and she got all upset, because they only wanted one twin. so the other coach and myself told her we would pull off the all star and put a travel team together. we told her we would pick up both girls knowing one wasn't very good. so we made some sacrifices for this mother and her daughters. really bit us in the rear.

we don't practice this much. we just wanted to practice every day before our state tournament.

we picked up two players and finished 3rd in our state tournament. not to bad i guess.

bgecoach

i have a girl on my team that is a great player and great young lady. she has already signed to play college ball next year so she can play. the only problem is her parents... we pulled her out of a game and her mom went ape@#*&, starting flinging her chair around and cussing. we only carry 12 players and everyone of them will be sitting at some point. plus her dad is always in my ear "giving me advice."

i try and recruit parents along with the players too but you're always going to have bad ones. i just try and ignore them. but if they get too bad i won't hesitate to let them know that they or their child are not bigger than the team and i have a whole list of players that wanted to play for us this summer. i'd be glad to give one of them a call if you or your daughter are really that unhappy.

pitchin

I have a question in relation to parents/coaches/kids also. It isn't fastpitch, but the same senario. My son was recently in the State Baberuth Allstar tournament and the coach decided to sit him the first game. Ok fine, he is one of the subs and I am not blind to his playing abilities. But, we were up 10 to 0 in the 4th and he still didn't put him in. At the bottom of the 5th inning it was 13 to 0 and he played the last 3 outs in right field. During regular seaon and at district all-stars, his sub in position was 2nd base and he would play all of some games and sub in others. I never had a problem with this, but 1/2 inning of a blowout, I had a problem with so I said something to the coach after my son had expressed his dissappointment. I wasn't confrontational nor did I yell. I just let him know that my son was upset and I didn't think it was right to treat him like he was only good enough to play 1/2 of an inning in a blowout. The coach was instantly defensive and raised his voice to me. He told me that if I thought I could do better to sign up to coach, threw his hands in the air and walked off. My son and his step-son are best friends so we know the guy and I didn't think I needed to be treated like this, but it's not about me so I never said another word, I figured he would talk to my son and explain the reason for lack of playing. Nope, ignored him the next day during warm ups, wouldn't talk to him during the game. I wasn't at warm ups, my husband wasn't either, so we didn't see what was going on, but my son was pretty upset after the game and told us what had happend then and in the dugout. He completely shut him out and took out his frustrations on the kid for something I had said. I'm not sure what to do at this point, maybe I never should have said a word, but it's pretty hard to do when your kid is hurting and expresses his dissappointment. What does everyone else think? coaches, parents? Should you never say anything as a parent?