Parents in Sports

[TN Bucknasty]

I live in a small town in Tennessee where I teach school and do some high school coaching. I'm not really looking forward to the next couple of years because all of the middle school coaches are going through such **** with their group right now. It's bad enough that the kids are really soft and are more concerned with how they look thank whether they can even compete or not, but the parents' behavior has been ridiculous.

Here are a couple of examples of the kinds of things I'm seeing-

Case #1 The football team is practicing in the gym because of the rain outside. Coach has the biggest kid on the team holding a tackling dummy for the other kids to hit. He goes step by step through how to hold the dummy and brace for impact. The kid stands there like a limp noodle and gets knocked to the floor by someone 100lbs lighter than him, and he thumps his head on the hardwood. The next morning, his parents inform the principal that they are filing suit for putting him at risk for serious head injury.

Case #2- A kid is skipping soccer games in order to go to band practice after the coach and the band director have agreed to allow the kid to miss practice on game days. Rather than cutting or punishing him like I would have, the coach tells the player that he needs to make a decision whether to be dedicated to the team or not. Then the parents complain to the local paper and the school board. Nothing serious, but still bad publicity in a small town and a pain in the butt.

Case #3- A parent donates a substantial amount of money to the team, then demands a refund because his son is not getting "adequate" playing time after continually missing practice and poor performance. This leads to a whole big legal battle about whether someone can or can't be refunded after donating money. Now the auditors are being brought in and it has hit the fan.

Case #4- Despite the girl being really upset, a parent will not allow her daughter to run cross country, because she might get injured and miss basketball.

Here in this county, most coaches make 3-6% of a beginning teacher's salary. For me, that works out to about .23 cents an hour. If it starts getting like that over the next few years, I'm just not sure that it will be worth it. So far the worst thing I've had happen was the principal threatening to fire me because his lazy kid wasn't getting enough playing time. I guess I should count myself lucky.