By Lorraine Berry
Coaching Management, 8.1, February 2000, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/cm/cm0801/parents.htm
Get a group of high school baseball coaches together and what stories are they swapping? Who’s the next major-league prospect in the area? How to teach patience at the plate? The latest in the continuing saga of bat standards? Nope, the number-one topic is parents. On the phone, in the stands, lurking around the practice fields, problem parents are giving today’s coaches their best yarns.
Chuck Goldfarb, Head Baseball Coach at Merritt Island (Fla.) High School, recalls one about the “letter-writer” parent. “About four years ago, I had one lady who went wacko on me,” he says. “She wrote every one of our district’s athletic directors, every principal, every school board member, all the way up to the Commissioner of Education, with personal attacks that were unwarranted. I finally had to get my attorney to write her and her husband a letter that said: ‘One more letter and we’re filing suit.’ And then it stopped. But that was an extreme case.”
What may not accompany these stories are the solutions that experienced coaches have developed to keep that ball from getting into play in the first place. In this article, we offer the rundown on keeping problem parents in their house and away from your home plate.
Understanding Parents
It is easy to dismiss the voice on the other end of the telephone line as that of an over-involved father or mother telling you how to do your job. But there are reasons parents care about their kid’s playing time—and acknowledging these reasons may help you to deal with such parents a little better.
The first reason, of course, is that parents love their children and don’t like to see them unhappy. “As a parent, you’re emotionally tied to your kid,” says Ben Jacobs, Head Baseball Coach at Richland (Wash.) High School. “You want what’s best for the kid. You sit around the dinner table and the kid starts saying such and such, and you see your kid feeling bad. We are in a society where we want to please our kids. So you, as a parent, want to step in and go talk to the coach about it.”
“The good side of it is that at least the parent cares enough to be there,” says Frank Smoll, Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington and author of numerous articles and books about effective parent-coach communication. “Give that parent some credit. You can work with that individual. The number-one problem parent is the one you never see—the athlete looks up in the stands at a game and mom or dad is never there.”
The caring parent becomes the problem parent when he or she over-identifies with his or her son. “My colleague, Ron Smith, and I have referred to this as the reverse-dependency trap,” Smoll says. “Part of the love bond is that parents identify with their children. And yet for some parents, the identification becomes excessive. It’s not Johnny or Mary who’s out there competing, but an extension of the parent’s own ego. When that happens, the young athlete has to excel or the parent feels threatened.”
Others blame parents’ over-involvement on the proliferation of pay-to-play youth sport leagues. “Consider the amount of money parents pay to support their children playing a sport for all those years,” says Wes Bergazzi, Director of Activities at Woodbridge (Va.) High School. “It’s enormous amounts of time, energy, and money—hotel rooms, trips, clinics. It’s in the thousands of dollars. “When you pay to play, you may have a say in who plays on a summer or weekend team,” Bergazzi continues. “But it doesn’t work that way on high school teams. So, this whole pay-to-play mentality comes into conflict with what we’re trying to achieve at the high school level, and we wind up having to deal with it.”
Establishing Ground Rules
“Having to deal with it” begins by educating today’s parents on what their role is all about. Many coaches accomplish this with a preseason parents’ meeting in which rules for playing time and communication are explicitly stated.
“I think it’s important to communicate early what your expectations are,” says Jay Gifford, Head Baseball Coach at Dodge City (Kan.) High School. “Because if you don’t, parents are going to dictate what their expectations are.”
“We have a preseason parents meeting in which we sit down and give the parents the same list of rules that we expect the players to follow,” says Andy Runzi, Head Baseball Coach at Herculaneum (Mo.) High School. “I think it’s important that the parents know what’s expected of the player. Once you do that, you develop a rapport with your players as well as their parents.”
“Every year I have a mandatory meeting for parents the day of my final cut,” says Goldfarb. “That’s a meeting where I talk and they listen. It’s not a question and answer thing. It’s basically the ground rules for them as far as any kind of interference with the program.”
If you are a new coach or tend to have over-involved parents, you may want to ask your athletic director or principal to be present at the meeting. “Two years ago, I simply went to our principal, and said, ‘You need to support me if you want me to coach here,’” says Dave Gasser, Head Baseball Coach at Lakeridge High School in Lake Oswego, Ore. “I said to her, ‘I need you to tell the parents that you expect them to respect me—that they need to respect this program that’s working hard to do something good for kids.’ And she came in and did it.”
With new coaches, Bergazzi makes it a policy to always be a part of the meeting. “With our young coaches, I call the first parents’ meeting and establish the guidelines,” says Bergazzi. “I tell them that the final decision on who plays is the coach’s. Period. That needs to come from the athletic director, and it needs to come from the coach—they need to work together.”
Beyond using the meeting to set the right tone, the gathering provides an opportunity to outline exactly how and when parents may communicate with you. “In our preseason meeting, I tell parents that I don’t have a totally open-door policy,” says Gifford. “I’m honest with them and say, ‘When it involves your kids’ playing time and my coaching strategies, I really don’t want your opinion.’
“Some coaches will tell parents they have an open door and they can talk to the coach anytime they want,” continues Gifford. “But I’m the opposite. I’ve even told them in our preseason meeting, ‘If you want to come in and tell me what to do, don’t be surprised if I show up at your job and follow you around someday.’ I think they’ve understood that pretty well.”
Goldfarb also sets down a “don’t talk to me about playing time” rule. “I tell parents that if they feel a burning desire to say something to me or to one of my coaches about why little Johnny’s not playing, he’s automatically on the bench for the next two games. I don’t ever get any questions.”
Gasser has a similar philosophy, but he also creates a system where parents who do have a concern over the position their son will be playing can approach him. “I tell them that after preseason, I will send the kids’ roles home with them so the parents know exactly what those roles are. I will make myself available to talk with them about those roles. I will have the freshman and j.v. coaches do the same. If they have problems, they can come in between this time and this time. Otherwise, sign that paper. You understand what the role is. You understand the rationale. Play ball.”
The last, and possibly most important, part of the meeting is to convince parents to buy into your philosophy and system. Explain that because baseball is a team sport, every role on the team is important. If an athlete is playing a small, but critical role, then the parents should praise their son for excelling in that role.
“Some kids are just going to pinch-run every 10th game and that’s all they’re going to do,” says Gifford. “That’s just the nature of the game. And it’s our job to sell the kid that that job’s important and that makes him a part of our team. So we tell those parents, ‘We expect you to also go along with that philosophy. And if you don’t, your kid will be miserable.’ If we’ve sold him on the idea that he’s important to our team and he’s a part of our team even if his role is small, and then he goes home and he hears, ‘You’re not playing, you ought to quit,’ then the kid gets confused and he thinks we’re feeding him a line.
This year, Gasser is planning to take the idea of the preseason parents’ meeting one step further by having an additional meeting for parents who have coached their son previously. “This year’s challenge is that I’m going to have a ‘Dads’ night’ and I’m going to tell them, ‘Get out of your kids’ heads,’” he says. “‘I’m their coach. If you’re trying to coach them during a game, you’re going to hurt them. And if you’re coaching them at the dinner table, you’re going to ruin them.’”
In-Season Communication
Another effective way to head problems with parents off at the pass is to foster good relationships with your players. A contented player is not going to carp about his role on the team at the dinner table.
Larry Turner, Head Baseball Coach at Owasso (Ok.) High School, has found a unique and successful method for getting his athletes to acknowledge who the best players are on the team, thus cutting down on charges that Turner is playing his favorites over his best. “Every year for the very first game of the season,” he says, “we will tell our team who the starting pitcher is, then we give each of them a sheet of paper and ask them to anonymously pick the starting lineup. Whoever has the most votes at first base is going to play first base, and so on. This is not a popularity deal. This is who they would play if they were the coach.”
Has it been a risky gambit to allow players to pick his opening day lineup? Hardly. “Since 1969 we’ve never lost an opening day game,” Turner says. “And we’ve compared what the players have picked as the opening day lineup to the lineup in the state championship games, and they’re almost identical. The kids know, for the most part, who should be playing.” And, as a consequence, Turner finds that parents and players understand that the coaches are giving playing time to the most deserving athletes.
But what about the athlete who is not the best at his position and will not be getting a lot of playing time? How does a coach develop a rapport with that player? The first thing the coach needs to give that athlete is his total honesty, according to John Marano, Head Baseball Coach at Mills E. Godwin High School in Richmond, Va. “If they’re the 16th through the 20th player, I’m real frank with them,” he says. “I tell them, ‘Son, you’re not going to get a whole lot of playing time in games. You’ll get to practice every day, you’ll get to travel with us, and it’s very important you work hard in practice. If you can handle that role, then we’d be glad to have you on the team.’ Then we kind of leave it up to them whether they want to be part of the program or not. I’ve been here nine years and I’ve only had one kid who turned us down.
“The other thing that I do,” he continues, “especially with a kid who doesn’t get to play a whole lot, is to give them things to do in practice and games that are very important. And then I try to stroke them. My third-string catcher last year was very important to this team and I let him know this. There were times during the season when I would just pull him aside after a game and say, ‘Hey, I want you to know that even though you’re not playing a lot, you’re making a real valuable contribution, and if you don’t work hard in practice, the rest of the team doesn’t get the full benefit.’”
Gasser agrees. For those players who won’t have much of a role on the field, he will find them an extra job that makes their participation vital to the team’s success. “Basically, I don’t keep a kid on the varsity team who I can’t find a significant role for—one that I value and his teammates can value,” he says. “Last year, we had an unbelievable kid who charted the opposing pitcher and he did an amazing job. He’d tell the kids, ‘Here’s what’s coming first pitch, here’s this guy’s pitching pattern,’ and he was an absolutely integral part of our team. Every kid on our team valued him and I valued him and there was no question that he was making a contribution. So if a kid can’t have a meaningful role and I can’t make the kid feel that he’s important, then I’m not very good.”
The dividends of such a policy are that players are happy and so are their parents. “I think the really good coaches are the ones who sell those kids on, “This is a team, and they don’t put players on the scoreboards, they put a team on the scoreboard,’” says Gifford. “We had a kid who only played one inning last year, but he caught in our bullpen. When we won the state championship, his parents and that kid were just as excited as the other kids. In my opinion, one of the highlights of the season was seeing that kid contribute in that way because we needed somebody to do that.”
In addition to making each player feel he’s making an important contribution, regardless of playing time, coaches stress that players have to feel they can talk to the coach at any time about anything. “We talk to our players a lot,” says Turner. “and if they have a problem, we want them to come talk to one of us. If they can’t be comfortable talking to me, they can talk to one of my assistant coaches.”
And Runzi recommends checking in with players on a regular basis to make sure you know where the kid’s at. “We will discuss his role and whether it’s increasing or decreasing,” says Runzi. “I will also tell him if I’m expecting more out of him or talk to him about certain aspects of what he’s doing. I think that leaves the guessing game out of it.”
Persistent Problems
But what happens if, despite the preseason parents’ meeting and the regular chats with the players, there’s still a problem? If a parent is persistent and wants to continue to discuss something off-limits or that the coach feels is already resolved, it’s a good idea to bring in reinforcements.
“If I can sense that there’s going to be a problem that’s serious,” says Jacobs, “or the parent wants to carry this the distance, I will take the meeting one step further. I will tell the parent: ‘I’m going to meet you down on the field, but the athletic director is going to be there and your son is going to be there. I don’t want to tell you anything that I’m not going to be man enough to tell your son.’”
Bergazzi emphasizes that all discussions with a parent have to have an ending point, even if there’s no resolution. “At some point, you have to close the loop—there has to be a finite end to any discussion,” he says. “And if that end is, ‘we all agree that we disagree,’ fine, but the coach will still make the call. There have been meetings I’ve been involved in where we ended up that way. There has to be closure. Otherwise, it leaves the door open for continuing dialogue or for others to pour through it and cause more problems for your program or your coach.
“If it goes beyond this stage, you should try to get administrative help above the level of the school, even if you have to go to the area superintendent’s office,.” he continues. “It if continues on so that it becomes a disruption, then you have to haul the parent in and say, ‘You won’t be here anymore picking your son or daughter up or even watching the games.’ That’s the far end of the scale.”
Developing a Thick Skin
Beyond having the proper communication strategies in place, the best defense against the slings and arrows of outrageous parents, according to coaches, is to develop a thick skin. Even if you’ve established a system where parents do not openly complain to you about your playing choices, chances are they’re still in the stands criticizing you. Part of being a good coach is learning to live with it, and even learning to laugh at it.
“It’s one thing that really tickles me,” Goldfarb says. “Most of the time, parents will say things about me personally, or about how I coach, thinking that it’s not going to get back to me. But it always gets back to me because there are other people who think they get on my good side by telling me.”
Does it bother him? “I don’t mind if they call me an idiot when a squeeze doesn’t work,” he says. “They’ve paid their two dollars. They can call me anything they want. But don’t call my players any names because then I’ve got a problem with it.”
Gasser says that being second-guessed on every decision you make comes with the territory. But learning to let go of the things you have no control over, like parents talking about you in the stands, will give you a lot more energy to deal with the things you do have control over, like teaching kids the fundamentals of the game and of life.
“Baseball is nothing but built-in second guesses,” he says. “Obviously if a guy steals and gets thrown out, it didn’t work. You pitch out and the next guy hits a home run, it didn’t work. There’s all this stuff where someone can say, ‘Hey that didn’t work, so he should have done the other thing.’ You know what? That’s baseball. If every high percentage move worked, nobody would lose.” But even then, there would still be parents saying that you should have done it differently.
[For more advice from Professor Smoll on how to overcome problems with parents, you can access the full text of CM-Baseball’s interview with him on our Web site at .]