Allow athlete to deal with real-life issues

I began coaching volleyball in a junior high parochial school program in 1988. Since then I have coached volleyball in schools and club programs to the varsity level and have worked summer camps at Gonzaga University.

Fortunately, I have had minimal problems with parents. Most parents either don’t know the game well enough or realize their child has a responsibility to be mature enough to deal with being part of a team.

The problems that I have dealt with have been mostly from parents that have an unrealistic opinion of their child’s abilities, and the child typically can be self-centered. Normally these children do not cope well with following team rules, because the parent will usually step in and do it for them.

I concur with your articles. When I started having preseason meetings with the parents to inform them what our goals and rules were, most parents were grateful for the information and supported the program. One of my primary rules, especially for high school athletes, was that the athlete needed to talk to me first if there were a problem. If I were approached by a parent, I would listen to them, but the first question that was asked was, “Why hasn’t your child talked to me?”

On the high school level, for athletes to go to the next level, they must have the maturity to communicate and effectively deal with problems concerning the team. If parents always get involved, how can these athletes expect to function well at a school across the country where they can’t rely on parents to intervene?

All of the college coaches that I have met have many similar requirements and expectations from the athletes they recruit to their school. The primary requirement is they want athletes with strong academics, typically a 3.5 GPA.

Each coach has told me one thing they don’t want is an athlete they have to baby-sit. They all get upset when they have to run a study hall for their players.

This is one thing I have not seen your articles address. The club programs have been an asset for the schools. The club programs were begun to strengthen school programs, with the clubs being a feeder system for the school, similar to minor and major league baseball. That has changed with the elite clubs only taking the best athletes. These clubs’ philosophy has begun to change the expectations parents have with schools and school coaches.

The new attitude is to win, period. Second place isn’t good enough. It has become an interesting phenomenon, how parents will take their children to many tryouts for different clubs and then try to pick the team they think will be the best.

In the number of years that I have coached, I have seen only a few athletes who stood out from the rest, who were definite Division I athletes.

The student/athlete needs to be the one in control of the situation, because at some point they will have only themselves to solve the problems they will encounter throughout their life.