Your experiences in life shapes you into the person that you are today. You played for a coach that likes to yell and scream and then you become a coach. Maybe that becomes your coaching style as well because that is what you are accustomed to. Or maybe you revert the other way because you don’t want it to negatively affect your players the way it did you.

I’ve watched many games at many different levels and the person I’ve really tried to avoid becoming is the parent that coaches his/her kid from the stands. That parent is not the coach, but continues to tell little “Johnny” or “Sally” what he/she needs to do throughout the whole game.

Usually, it is at a loud yell or scream so everybody can hear how bad the kid is really playing. The kid keeps looking into the stands. Doesn’t pay any attention to the coach half the time. And just looks plain lost as far as what needs to be done on the field.

I see this at high school, junior high, but especially the younger ages.

As a parent of some younger athletes, I finally can understand why you want to scream at your kid? I’ve found myself wanting to do that many times.

But I don’t.

I’ve only slipped up a couple times, but generally I try to let the coaches coach and sit back and shut up. If I have anything to comment on, I will discuss that after the game. I tell my kids that once they start playing the game, unless I actually am the coach, it is up to them to play the game and listen to their coach. My constant yelling would just screw things up.

Now let’s swing it around to my training facility.

I love when parents watch what we do. It gives them an idea of what we are doing to help their kids become better athletes. I hope it also instills confidence that we ARE good coaches and we CAN get the job done.

Most of these parents will sit down and read something, get some work done, play with their phones, etc. Occasionally they will look up from their readings to see what is happening, but most of the time they are concentrating on other things, but our training.

Some parents will react just like the above parents in the game scenario. They will try to yell cues, get their kid’s attention when they feel he/she is doing something incorrectly, and get it to a situation where the kids once again are paying more attention to the parent then the coach. Which in this case is my staff and yours truly.

Although, I appreciate you trying to help us out, I must request that you refrain for the following reasons:

  • You pay us a lot of money to coach your kid up in an environment that is not a game setting. When you say anything to the kids during their workouts it takes away from them concentrating on us.
  • I think it is great you are learning our cues and some of the things we are looking for. Please, feel free to utilize those cues OUTSIDE of our training facility. But, when you come to work with us and enter those doors, please just remain quiet and let your kid focus on what we want to accomplish for that day.
  • Everything that you are verbally telling your kid to correct while we are training is probably accurate. We see it too. But there is a reason we aren’t saying anything. Maybe we want to give him/her more of a chance to make the realization themselves to make the correction. Maybe there is something more important that we want them to focus on at that time and will sacrifice the correction you are trying to get across to them. Maybe we have found that your kid needs to try and work on just ONE thing that day to correct, so that next time we can move on to the item you are noticing. Your kid isn’t the first athlete we have trained, so please bottle up your impulse to say something and let us do our job.
  • A different voice sometimes is all that is needed to make the breakthroughs that you are looking for. We have coached athletes for years. Let us use our coaching methods to mold your kid into the kind of athlete HE/SHE desires, not necessarily YOU.

I’m not saying that you can’t talk to us directly afterwards and express some issues you noticed. I have absolutely no problem with that. You can understand how we train the athletes better that way. And maybe we did miss something. Communication is key, that is why we need you to silence yourself during the session so the kids can hear OUR communication.

“I know what he/she needs to do, but my kid won’t listen to me.”

Well that is why you have come to me. Let me be the voice your kid will listen to. So no disrespect when I say this, but please, “Stop trying to coach your kid during our sessions.”

Photo courtesy of Jim Larrison on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/larrison/