CHAPTER
9
One important event to start parent involvement is an early team/parent meeting. Call one before the first practice, and preferably right after the coaches meeting. This will be a team meeting including all the kids. But also require at least one parent of each child to attend. Personally telephone each family. Make it clear that this is a requirement. If one parent isn’t there, the kid doesn’t play on your team. Make sure you don’t make an exception for any player, especially not the star player.
Make a roster before the parent-kid meeting. Make sure to give a copy to each family. A copy of league rules should be made for each assistant coach. Write down and copy your rules for each family. Hand these out at the meeting, along with a copy of the game schedule and your practice schedule. Don’t rely on every family having a computer or using it. Go with a hard copy. It eliminates excuses.
At the meeting, read your list of jobs aloud. Ask for questions. Discuss each job as necessary. Then ask for volunteers. You may have to say that the meeting isn’t going forward until you have one parent from each family helping. Say again that you aren’t going to do it alone. Outline the jobs no one has volunteered for and wait. Sometimes there will be a long pause before parents start to volunteer. Don’t give them any choice.
Make sure you are prepared, and keep the meeting short. I’ve seen the most meaningless bunch of drivel put out at such meetings.
One year, our daughter signed up for a competitive hockey team. The parent-kid meeting was a disaster. It lasted over two hours. Nothing was written down or handed out. Except for that meeting, there was no parent involvement. The coaches were two good old boys who could barely skate, had never coached, and didn’t ask for help.
There was a lot of talk about how expensive ice time is (a fact), but no talk about minimum playing-time rules. It turned out there weren’t any. The team carried too many players. My daughter was quite capable and got good playing time. But many parents became unhappy when their children got little or no playing time.
Eventually, it became clear that one of the coaches’ daughters was the superstar and phantom coach. Practices were a farce. Our daughter didn’t learn one new thing all season. It seemed the team was purposely set up to get money from parents whose daughters weren’t going to play in order to pay for ice time and tournament fees.
How did things end up? The team had some very good talent besides the superstar. They won the Minnesota State Championship for their age group. It was proof that talent can substitute for coaching. It proved that coaches need not have played the game. And it proved that playing-time rules and parental involvement can prevent a lot of bitterness in the end.
You must make it clear to the parents that you have a life too. You are not a taxi service. If parents want to organize a carpool, they can do so on their own. If they have doubts about practice because of the weather, they should just show up, unless they get a call from the telephone committee.
Make it clear to the kids and parents that you recognize that the art of coaching is not an exact science. You will make mistakes. Make clear that if parents wish to make suggestions or complain, they must do so in private, one-on-one with the coach, calmly and quietly.
You should reserve the right to decide whether a child continues to play for the team based upon the parents’ cooperation and behavior. The message is: Behave as a parent should, or you and your kid will not be on our team. The association must back you in this.
When it comes to playing time, which a very important issue to most parents, you can give an evasive answer much like the kind that politicians give to tough questions. Or you can use good logic to tell them you will make every effort to make sure you meet and exceed league rules about playing time and that you will have help from the scorer/ timekeeper to assure the same.
If a team consists of kids of a couple of ages, say seven and eight-year-olds, let the parents and kids know that the older kids will usually get longer playing time. Next year, the younger kids will be the “old folks.” Also tell the “old folks” that merely being older doesn’t guarantee more playing time. They will need to hustle to get it. The better their cooperation, participation, practice attendance, and attitude, the more playing time they will get. Within the league rules about playing time your policy should be expressed as “more hustle, more time.” This is the most powerful motivator the coach has. Use it wisely.
If the league doesn’t have rules about playing time, then it is poorly organized. Lots of coaches and parents will waste a lot of time becoming wrapped up in this quandary. More on this later.
In the meantime, think through the issue and devise a meaningful and fair personal rule. Do some calculating: total minutes, innings, periods; total number of kid-minutes, innings, periods; number of games to be played, etc. Then determine a reasonable minimum time to commit to, realizing that you want to win, but not at all costs.