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This from Startribune.com. I umpired a little of the Twin Cities area Mickey Mantle this year. So sad.
P-Sz
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In parents vs. coach, White Bear Lake kids lose
Curt Brown, Star Tribune
Published July 31, 2003
The White Bear Lake manager says the parents of his 15-year-old baseball players are control freaks who scream instructions to their sons.
The parents counter that the coaches are autocratic and have failed to use the proper strategies, from defending against double steals to requiring pregame infield practice.
After a successful season that culminated in White Bear Lake winning the Mickey Mantle state championship, things came to a head.
The parents drafted a letter, outlining how the coaches "must make a commitment . . . to maximize the opportunity to win," if the team was to continue its season at a national competition.
The coaches shrugged off what they considered an inappropriate list of conditions.
The resulting standoff, which cost the team its trip to the national finals in Oklahoma this weekend, comes as no surprise to experts in the world of youth sports.
White Bear Lake's state champions stay home.
Provided By Luke Anderson
"One of the most significant problems we face in youth sports today is the extent to which families immerse themselves and become so involved that it blurs the separate and different roles of parents and coaches," said Richard Weinberg, a professor at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota.
Weinberg, who leads youth sports seminars, says kids suffer whether overzealous parents second-guess their coaches or meddle in the classroom.
"When parents start tinkering and bring their cut-throat, competitive attitudes from the workplace," he said, "the kids get mixed messages when they just want to have a good time."
Whoa, says Luke Anderson of Vadnais Heights, whose son, Jared, played third base and pitched for the team.
Luke Anderson said school sports have athletic directors standing between coaches and parents to monitor how well things are going. But in summer baseball leagues, where parents fork out hefty fees and travel expenses, he said, parents have to advocate for their kids' best interests.
"I think it's reasonable to expect a certain standard of coaching," Anderson said. "I'm not asking for the sky and the moon, but how they're going to play influences whether people want to drive 800 miles and pay $1,000 to watch them get out-strategized."
Team manager Joe Janitschke, 59, is a retired White Bear Lake police officer who has coached teenage baseball for 42 years. He said dads like Anderson, who coached the kids as they grew and progressed, have trouble letting go.
"Guys who coached these kids for years have a tendency to tell everybody what to do," he said. "They tell everybody when to swing, when not to swing, how to position themselves in the field. They are control freaks and they've been interfering all season long."
When the team lost its first game at the state tournament in Monticello, parents' season-long frustration mounted.
"We're great big White Bear Lake and we were playing marginal teams we should have beat straight out with the 10-run rule," said John Buresh, the team's travel director. "The coaches had created some distrust among the parents and they were calling me."
Some parents didn't want to travel to Norman, Okla., just to lose two games and come home. Some wanted to know whether their kids would play or simply sit on the bench. Buresh drafted a one-page letter to express those concerns.
The nine-paragraph letter thanked the coaches and outlined commitments that families, players and coaches needed to make before the team would accept the Oklahoma invitation.
The "coaches must make a commitment to use all the 'tools in the toolbox' to maximize the opportunity to win," the letter said, listing such things as pinch runners and the use of signs for suicide squeeze bunts.
It also mentioned "putting the 'best nine' out in the field at all times."
Janitschke bristled.
"It was like: Accede to their demands or requests or they'll pull their child out," he said.
Buresh said seven of the 15 families ultimately decided to skip the tournament. Some had scheduled vacations. Some didn't want to spend the money. And others just wanted a response from the coaches, which they never got.
"We wanted some straight yes-or-no answers and they danced around, so we asked our son," said Becky Lunda, a mother of one of the players. "I have no animosity or bad thoughts and I think the coaches did a great job to get this far, but they couldn't say one way or another whether all the kids would get a chance to play."
Janitschke said that a year from now, the parents will look back and regret their decision to make a statement about the coaching at the expense of their children.
Jared Anderson, the third baseman and pitcher, only shrugged.
"I'm pretty bummed," he said. "We were all pretty excited, but a lot of the parents had their views about the coaches and not all of those were very good ones."
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