Some parents roll their eyes when I tell them that my kids do travel sports – some of the eye-rolling parents do so because they refuse to join the cult but other eye-rolling parents do so because my kids only do one or two travel sports.
At our core we are a good “house league” family. We like one practice a week and Saturday games – then return to our humdrum lives. The goal (and bear in mind, there was no goal) was to have the kids play in a bunch of sports and if they were good, HOORAY, and if not we would lightly encourage non-cut high school sports like track. Of course, I was naive and wrong and probably a little gassy.
My daughter played AYSO regular soccer for $200 per year when she was in first and second grade. She wasn’t a star but she loooved being around a team of kids. She showed mild interest in getting better and understood that there was more to the game than running to the goal. Unfortunately, the parent coaching was awful – and that’s before even taking the field.
Her first coach, Mr. Smile showed up to 30% of the practices. While networking with the parents he would pull kids from the games, if they did something correctly. Self-esteem and teamwork were not on the docket. A few moms stepped in and ran the practices but the kids weren’t having fun and the ones who liked soccer seemed to be the most frustrated.
And yet, Mr. Smile was better than the next dad coach who kicked my daughter in the head with a soccer ball and then pretended not to do it. His daughter would go to the bathroom at practice and not return and she was one of the more focused kids. My daughter was actually learning to resent teammates and get confused about the basic premise of soccer.
Maybe a travel team (or at least the $1200 price tag) would get rid of the kids who often left the field during the game.
And our wish was granted – our team hired an English coach – I mean fish, chips, and tepid ale. The British coach was a 2000% improvement – our daughter would ask questions about soccer and want to go to practice. Mission accomplished.
Then he got deported. Really, his visa ran out. Another parent saw this as an opportunity to push is daughter’s nine-year-old career forward and I was stuck paying $1200 for a carbon copy (it’s like a scan) of what we escaped from six months earlier.
And that’s when I became a sports parent. At some point, playing soccer took a back seat to the politics, administration, and relationships surrounding the team. My daughter and I talked soccer a little bit but not nearly as my wife and I talked soccer administration. In the end, we joined a clique of dissatisfied parents, gossiped like jerks, put out a survey and removed the coach.
I think we were right to get what we paid for and even to show the kids that we wanted to put them in a position to succeed. But the games felt heavy and the poor communication with the club coordinators caused stresses that couldn’t be unseen. En masse, my daughter’s team left the club and joined another team. Personally, I felt like I let myself down. I set out to give my kid an environment of self-esteem and togetherness and instead I showed her that pettiness, frustration, and distrust were also parts of sports not reserved for the pros.
The Reluctant Sports Parent 