Some 1,300 emails were sent to coaches around the state in the beginning of May, asking their opinion on their interaction with parents.
Of the more than 300 coaches who completed the survey, roughly 60 percent took part in the last question – describe your worst experience in dealing with a parent.
They ranged from no conflict to a need for a restraining order; from being called a racist, to watching kids perform poorly when a parent attended; from a parent telling a coach their child wouldn’t be attending practices and workouts only to blame the coach for the struggle, to having a parent melt when they couldn’t afford to pay utilities and they were being shut off.
(Note: complaints have been edited for style and brevity, but not for tone or fact)
-- A parent bashed me over and over on social media, even talked about my kids. I had a parent try to attack me after a game and we had to ban him from coming back.
-- I have a parent who hates one of his daughter's teammates because those two don't get along. Whenever he would keep the book and if the ball was even hit close to her, he would give her an error. This same parent thinks that his child should start because she is a senior. He constantly posts passive aggressive tweets about myself and my coaching style. He's never used my name but it's obvious. He is a cancer to my team as a parent and he is feeding this garbage to his daughter who brings it to practice and games. Every time he emails me about a concern of his, first line is always "Her senior year just isn't going the way she thought it would"....like it's my fault! Maybe she should make better life decisions!
-- Being greeted at my locker room door trying to get to my team and having a grandparent stop and confront me about 2:40 playing time for a grandson after a great win that we were not given much of a chance.
-- I had a board-approved parent volunteer dismiss a player from the team during a training session without consulting me on what happened. Once I investigated, I found the parent to be in the wrong and reinstated the player. When I took that action, the parent/volunteer pulled his child from the team along with himself.
-- Parents that don't understand athletics and think it is community athletics or other programs that have no accountability. I am always asked why are there so many rules?
-- Parents questioning why the JV players aren't given the same uniforms as varsity players, which was a big issue to some.
-- Several players who were on the team the previous year were cut from the team following tryouts. I met with the parents who requested meetings. This meeting did not satisfy them. They continued to call the principal and stalk practice for around a month. Trying to handle this in a professional way, I tried to not respond to them. Finally, I called each parent and asked for them to voice their concerns. When I initiated the contact and requested to meet with them to answer any further questions, they did not want to meet and stopped their behavior.
-- Parent notified the school board about unequal treatment of players due to a lack of playing time on behalf of one player.
-- A parent was intoxicated. This situation put all the players and coaches in a bad place. We felt so bad for the child, who left the team because of his father.
-- I had a parent invite me to their house and threaten me because I wasn't treating their child with the golden treatment because he was our best player. He told me I had to take away the other captain's armbands and make his son the only captain because I haven't been treating his son with the respect he deserves.
-- On a Saturday, we swept a semifinal playoff series, which was our 18th consecutive victory in the playoffs. We swept to a state championship the prior season, and had swept four straight series to that point. Sunday morning, I received the most personal attack from a parent I've ever received via an e-mail.
For context, earlier in the season this player skipped practice claiming to be sick, and went to get a tattoo. I suspended him for two games, and he told his mother that he was just sick and couldn't play. His parents were divorced, and Dad allowed him to skip practice to get the tattoo while Mom didn't know. I worked through this situation with them to keep him on the team because I felt it would be in his best interest.
Fast forward: She blasted me because her son had not pitched yet in the playoffs. She accused me of purposely getting his hopes up each week and then not putting him in. We swept each series, so there were only two games played rather than three. I reminded him each week that he needed to be prepared to pitch in the event of a Game Three (which he DID in the finals when we had to play three games), but we continued to sweep so he wasn't needed at that point. Essentially, Mom was mad because the team wasn't losing enough for her team to pitch.
-- A parent belittling other kids and talking about the kids personally.
-- Going to the administration and asking that I lose my job even though my team was ranked and finished high in playoffs. I have also noticed that there is far more respect for male coaches than female coaches. Female coaches are often treated worse simply because of gender.
-- A parent assumed I was of a different ethnicity. When I cut their child, they came to the school to confront me and felt because of my ethnicity I shouldn't be coaching a team where the majority of the student athletes were of a different ethnicity than me.
-- Doctor in town's kid would not act right so we had to get rid of the player; a doctor with much more money than I ever thought about having had never been told no by anyone. They went to principal and tried to get me fired if I did not reinstate his child and took away a utility vehicle he had previously donated because I would not let his kid back on the team.
-- Had to answer to AHSAA about recruiting. Parents wanted their kid to play so reported the starter living out of zone. He wasn't. Called AHSAA to say a kid was recruited that year. The senior starter had actually been enrolled since seventh grade. Called the ACLU, who investigated me and interviewed my team with administration independently to see if they felt team decisions were racially motivated. Kids said "no way.” Voted for and campaigned to withhold stipends for coaches since we hurt their kids scholarship chances. Vote passed. All of this was last season alone -- yes, I left.
-- It started at the beginning of the season, he approached me to ask about my thoughts on a few different strategies to "feel me out." After that conversation, I knew he would be trouble. It was two weeks into the season, and his daughter displayed a very negative action toward another player. After we were finished for the day, I pulled her aside and told her the actions were not acceptable. He immediately comes to me and begins berating me. He gets too close for my comfort, and I asked him to give me the respect he would give to a male coach. He took a step toward me. I asked two more times and two more times he walked toward me. Thankfully, there was a parent standing by that stepped in and asked the parent to leave.
-- A parent told me that the reason his daughter got hurt was because I was playing favorites. He never yelled, but spoke harshly enough to tear me and my coaching abilities down.All this was happening while play was still going on.
-- A parent pulled her child off the team because it was not like park ball where if they made a mistake they thought their child should be patted on the back and told it was OK to mess up.
-- A parent accused me of stealing money from our booster account because his son was benched for not performing. Our school and our Central Office both performed audits of all of our accounts and found that everything was done correctly, but the parent kept trying to come back with other accusations.
-- I once had a parent come to my classroom during my planning period to "talk" with me about the way I scheduled and kept telling me how many board members he was friends with and how he chose to speak to me first before going to them. He wanted me to hold a meeting and promise to change and show contrition.
-- Travel ball is the most serious issue in dealing with parents. Travel ball is a "feel good" for kids. Most are "bought" positions and therefore the child has playing time. High school ball is much different and parents do not understand, especially when egos have been falsely inflated. Travel ball practices once a week and plays on weekends. Not reality for high school ball ... and this causes players to dread practice and only look forward to the game. Coaches have realized the players now have no knowledge of the game and have had to resort to actually teaching the fundamentals of the game at the high school level.
-- Was accosted early in my career by a parent whose son had gotten hurt in a football game. I had asked a doctor to check him out and the doctor told me to hold him out due to bruised ribs. Later it was discovered he had a ruptured spleen and almost died. The mother blamed me for missing how badly he was actually hurt.
-- The worst experience I had with a parent was after a game, a mother asked me in front of her son why he didn’t play that game. Before I could respond the player in question told his mom, "we earn our playing time." I basically echoed that sentiment, and told her it wasn’t personal and that all my players have to earn their playing time through attendance at practice, effort shown at practice/in the classroom, and overall attitude. The parent understood, and I never had a problem again.
-- There are players that don't get support from home. No one is there to pick them up after practice, they don't get sent with anyway to pay for a meal after a game and you usually have to take them home from games. Without fail, near the end of the season some random person shows up, introduces themselves as the child’s parent and then chides you for not doing enough to help them get recruited/signed.
-- I was once falsely accused of an inappropriate relationship with one of my players. The parent that falsely accused me took it upon himself to contact the parents of the player that I allegedly had the relationship with to let them know that the administration had been notified and that I would be reprimanded. The worst part was having to explain the situation to my spouse and my family. Parents have no boundaries when it comes to playing time for their kids, apparently. The situation was resolved and I was cleared of all accusations.
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