Article about youth sports parents...
 

From an unlikely source...Frank Martin, HC of South Carolina.

https://www.sbnation.com/college-bas...s-youth-sports

As an administrator in a youth soccer club, youth soccer ref, and basketball ref (youth thru HS), I think this should be mandatory viewing for parents of all participants!

Thanks for sharing!

Teacher, coach, and official here. I'm on board with requiring this along with booster shots when kids enter kindergarten.

One of the biggest reasons I have minimal interest in my kids playing travel/highly competitive sports is the other parents. If my kids show potential and real interest on their own, sure, I'd put them in. However, if they land on a team where the parents and coaches are idiots, they will be just as quickly pulled off that team.

Basketball Official , Coach, Board Member of Youth Leagues (in the past)....

I coached my oldest daughter in hoops up to 7th grade when she decided it wasn't fun for her any longer. In 6th grade, she got the opportunity to play for her school team and a coach who wasn't me.

Like Frank Martin said, I'd sit in the stands and watch parents lose their minds. The same parents of kids I was coaching on the travel team. A couple of Dad's asked me "Aren't you going nuts sitting up here?" My answer was NO..."I'm enjoying watching my kid play!"

I've never understood the mentality of these parents who act like 5th grade basketball is going to determine their kids college ability on any given Saturday. :rolleyes:

Don't get me started on this! I understand college is becoming financially inaccessible for many, but to bank on your kid getting a scholarship from sports seems insane to me. This is nowhere worse than in club soccer where parents will spend $1000s of dollars every year for their kid to play travel soccer year round, even though, quite frankly, their kids aren't that good. Clubs are happy to take their money, but if they actually saved that money, they may be able to help more than what they're hoping to get from a sports scholarship. Plus, let's be real here, the scholarships they're getting are for little D3 schools that may not actually be best for their academic pursuits. Yes, let me pigeon hole my kid into some school that throws them a little money vs. finding a school that fits my kid's personality and academic pursuits. Oh, and let me gamble those $1000s of dollars with the very real chance they get zero scholarships. Great plan.

Hey, I get it if your kid is truly gifted and could get a D1 scholarship to play anywhere, but that is < 10 kids per state in most cases. For the rest of them, let them play rec and have fun. [/rant off]

FWIW-- he may actually be wrong--
 

but we wont admit it to ourselves. How often do we have P&R level kids that are just obnoxious, that "deserve" a foul every now and then. For him to say we never target kids is probably overlooking our humanity.. we all do it to some degree.. whether we admit it here, or to ourselves. So a parent feeling his kid may be being targeted may actually be right-- of course the kid got his arrogant obnoxiosness from that very parent.. so i dont fell all that bad about it.

Parents think their kids are being targeted when we do not even know what the hell they are. Stop it with admitting anything. I do not work a kids game, high school game or even college game trying to target a single kid for anything. Now when you show you do not listen, I will not pass on things that I might have given you the benefit of the doubt about, but I certainly am not targeting you or any reason.

I tell kids in the pre-game meeting (that we only have in high school and college), "If we are talking to you, we are helping. If you do not listen, we will put air in the whistle." It is that simple. The good kids or players listen and play the game.

Peace

nitpick: NCAA Division III forbids scholarships for athletics.

Yes -- but if you're a good athlete, you just might be able to find an academic (or other) scholarship that would go to someone else if you weren't a good athlete.

Officially they are grants.

Happily Ever After ...
 

My daughter was recruited for soccer by a small Catholic Division III University. She wasn't an All-State soccer player, but she was pretty good, good enough for the college head coach to make the two hour trip to see her play. When she visited the campus, the head coach marched her down to the scholarship office. My daughter wasn't the valedictorian, but was one of the top twenty students in her high school class of 500 students. Good soccer player plus good grades got her a full ride for five years. If she hadn't been recruited for soccer, we might never had known about the academic scholarship that she received (we might never had known anything about this tiny school). She graduated with a nursing degree and is now a registered nurse at a small hospital here in Connecticut.

Not buying this. I don’t care how obnoxious/bad a kid is (especially youth/sub-varsity level), if you can’t rise above personal bias and give that player the benefit of a clean slate for each game, you shouldn’t be wearing a whistle. We can’t lower ourselves to the level Coach Martin is talking about.

I sent this to one of our League Administrators and he said exactly that - he would send it out before the start of next yrs basketball season! :)