The Reality of Travel Ball...

[Jquick823]

This is probably better suited for the coaching thread but this thread sees more views and I personally think this is important.

Background: I am trained in suicide prevention/conflict management and several other areas are part of my job. I am an AC for a 14U travel team. I also follow as many of the girls as possible on Instagram only. Why only Instagram well because a player told me that Facebook is for old people and parents so they go to Instagram.

Situation: I wake up on Saturday and begin looking through my phone as emails, facebook and of course Instagram. Scrolling through the ridiculous "Selfies" I come across a post from a player. This post reads like a goodbye message. I immediately send this to the manager so that he is aware. That afternoon we have practice and this girl arrives and we have her and her dad come outside so we can address the issue. The girl says all the right things and turns out she's being picked on by girls of another team at school. I know she is also struggling with grades as I monitor those as well and hope those are the only 2 issues she's having. The part of this that irked me was that the dad was oblivious to all of this. His response was one of "well how should I know she posted that I don't have instagram". I told him he needs to get instagram, twitter, snap chat, kik, facebook and I'm sure I'm missing some so he knows what's going on.

Parents... From what I have seen on here everyone is involved in their kids lives. But please as coaches monitor your players not just because social media will ruin scholarship offers if the wrong stuff is put on there, but because it to me is part of the coaches responsibility. The male involvement in female sports is so low in my area that coaches fill that role of father figure whether we want to realize it or not.

 

[coach james]

Social media is HUGE with these kids. It's a whole other world than the one we grew up in. My dd has a thousand "friends and followers" but has only actually met and hangs out with about 10 or 12 of them???
Nice catch on this kid, she's reaching out for either real help or attention. Either way, it's something that needed addressed. Her dad needs to wake up and smell the coffee here....

 

[RubberBiscuit]

God love ya if ya do have the time & energy to help parent a child that does not have one - but it is not the responsibility of a coach.

Also you are running a fine line of stalking so be careful.

It kind of irks me that you want to judge a dad just based on the fact that he was not aware of one nights social media rants from a mood-swing teen.

 

[riseball]

God love ya if ya do have the time & energy to help parent a child that does not have one - but it is not the responsibility of a coach.

Also you are running a fine line of stalking so be careful.

It kind of irks me that you want to judge a dad just based on the fact that he was not aware of one nights social media rants from a mood-swing teen.

That is a bit of a stretch. The described activity is not even close to criminal stalking.

 

[ScottyDont]

Parents, if you're not monitoring your kids' social media feeds, you are not doing your job. Period. It's a different world today, and plenty of things go on on social media that you NEED to know about.

For those of you with recruitable athletes, you'd better believe coaches are checking out their feeds, and making decisions based on their findings. My daughter's future coach told us he checks all of his recruits on a daily basis.

 

[obbay]

I don't monitor DD's snapchat and instagram- how do you do that? I started to but I really hate most social media. I monitor facebook but she doesn't seem to have many friends on that, I assume because most kids dont use it. also, one time when she got a new phone, all of a sudden DDs contacts merged with mine and I started receiving text messages from her friends that were intended for her....gave me the creeps.
I guess we need to have a talk. I knew with the group she used to hang with, they would do stuff without her and then be sure to include her on the distribution of photos of them having a great time without her. Nice kids. just ask their mothers.

 

[GunnerShotgun]

Parents, if you're not monitoring your kids' social media feeds, you are not doing your job. Period. It's a different world today, and plenty of things go on on social media that you NEED to know about.

For those of you with recruitable athletes, you'd better believe coaches are checking out their feeds, and making decisions based on their findings. My daughter's future coach told us he checks all of his recruits on a daily basis.

Um no, I don't NEED to know every social media conversation that my daughter and her friends are having. I prefer to educate my daughter on social media (and internet) and trust her to make the right decisions as I do with everything else.

Some of you guys have control issues, and it's creepy.

 

[undergroundga]

Um no, I don't NEED to know every social media conversation that my daughter and her friends are having. I prefer to educate my daughter on social media (and internet) and trust her to make the right decisions as I do with everything else.

Some of you guys have control issues, and it's creepy.

My kids are still young. My dd is 12. But I kinda fall into this category too. I feel like if we handle are parental job correctly our kids will make the right decisions.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not naïve and think that they won't push limits and make errors in judgment, but to this point our kids have done nothing to make me concerned to need to monitor their social media. They know that at any point I can and will ask for passwords and check on them. And I have occasionally checked but nothing that I would consider monitoring.
Sometime in the future their actions might warrant me changing my attitude, but if that happens, social media might be the least of my worries. Until then I will trust them and let them learn how to handle social media responsibly.
We do talk about it, and I do talk about it with our team.

 

[Strike2]

This is probably better suited for the coaching thread but this thread sees more views and I personally think this is important.

Background: I am trained in suicide prevention/conflict management and several other areas are part of my job. I am an AC for a 14U travel team.

From these first couple of sentences, I thought this post was going a much different route! Suicide prevention & conflict management are outstanding skills for an AC. Every team should have someone similarly qualified simply to deal with the adults!

 

[Easton33]

Um no, I don't NEED to know every social media conversation that my daughter and her friends are having. I prefer to educate my daughter on social media (and internet) and trust her to make the right decisions as I do with everything else.

Some of you guys have control issues, and it's creepy.

Some of you parents put too much trust in 13-15 year olds to make adult decisions and that is creepy.