What types of parents are the worst to deal with???

Tennis, swimming, soccer.
In my community we have two public high schools, but even better, they are in the SAME BUILDING. Even better, it's an East and a West, but the students aren't split up geographically. They are split up by their birthdays. Odd days at one school and even days at the other.
I love when I hear that I am biased for/against either of them when I live 25 miles away in another county. I am usually biased against the team that sucks and a big homer (possible graduate) of the school whose team is doing well.

 

I hate when you are in sectionals/regionals and the local high school makes up a press box for the extra media that are there...yet they let the school's stat crews in there also...so it ends up being the loudest part of the gym...SO ANNOYING

Some people go to the games...TO WORK!

/end threadjack

 

Got an email today from the news editor saying parents were complaining about the lack of coverage for the local hockey team and it's "16-0" record.

First, this team has yet to beat anyone. Second, we have covered them but not in the past three weeks because we've had state swimming and state track championship meets and have had limited space. Third, in two weeks, they'll be getting all the coverage they can handle when hockey playoffs roll around.

The news editor tells me to "cover them soon". I fire back "We'll cover them when they deserve coverage".

I'm really, really, really hoping we go to cover them and they lose their "first game of the season". (They've already lost to non-league schools that actually could give them a game. Basically, they decided to stay down a division despite having a great team because they were afraid of jumping up and getting their teeth kicked in.)

 

Any parent who coaches their kid. Had a guy at one of the schools my paper covered who volunteered on every team his kids were a part of, he thought his daughter was good enough as a sophomore to play D-1 hoops. She was nowhere near the kind of player that a D-1 coach is going to be looking for. She did however wind up as a D-1 athlete for cross country.

EDIT: Didn't see all the other posts about this. My fault.

 

okay, somebody out there answer a question i've pondered numerous times. i venture to say the answer is going to be "well, we don't have enough volunteers or nobody wants to coach, so we....", but it's this:

why is the father of a player (or players) always on the coaching staff of his son's team?
why can't Little Johnny be on Team A and Little Johnny's Father on Team B?
But it's never that way.
I find myself perusing team rosters and seeing the last name of the coaches and then checking the last names of the players. and invariably, if Daddy Smith is on a staff, Johnny Smith is on that same team.
and I know, I know: it's the father-son bonding experience which is all fine and good..but wouldn't it sometimes be good for letting Little Johnny know that, once he's out in real life, his dad just might not be on the same "team." hell, wouldn't going home and listening to poppa probably fuss at him for going 0-for-3 over the supper table be enough?

 

One of the teams I covered the head coach's son was the starting quarterback. I got to know the coach pretty well and asked him if it was ever awkward coaching his son and he said it was at times, he also told me that they never talked football at home, which seemed to be kind of interesting.

 

I've got the feeling that this is the dynamic more often than any of us think -- a coach and a coach's son/daughter avoid discussing the sport at home.

 

If I had to single out just one parent, it's gotta be the dad who thought his prep hoopster son was going to be good enough to play at Duke.
I saw this scenario develop when the young dude was playing in youth rec leagues and Agent/Overseer/CEO/Father would call or drop by results of how his son and his team did (only because his son played on that team, of course)...he dominated these games and probably averaged 25-30 or so points a game. fine. now do it at the next level. so he goes on to the 5A (largest class in Louisiana) high school in our area and is so-so at best. makes all-district, doesn't even make all-state. and the dad continues to call or drop by statistics, just to make sure his numbers jive with the official scorer's.he averaged maybe 14-15 points a game, max, and was suspect defensively.
total suffocation by his dad to the point where the boy--a really nice, shy youngster--became the butt of jokes and snickers from teammates/classmates/other parents because of the way his dad was promoting him. i felt sorry for the youngster.
oh, he played college ball all right. after his parents took him to duke to show him around campus--they didn't offer or even contact him--he wound up signing for a D-3 program. then dropped off of the team after a year to concentrate on his studies.
to this day, every time i see that father, i want to take him aside and reprimand him for the way he coddled his son and tried to make him something he wasn't about to be or ever live up to. i considered it a mild form of "child abuse," to be honest.
this same dad used to also coach little league baseball and, of course, his son was on the team. the dad would scout other teams as if he was turning in reports to the Major League Scouting Bureau. unfucking believable.

 

I'd imagine every one of us has a couple parents like that Micke — and the closer you are to any one team, you manage to see it a bit more. Sometimes you really do want to step in and try to convince them they're not helping.

I had one in hockey a few years back. His kid was playing practically every second shift, killing penalties, some power play time and still he came to me huffing and puffing, demanding to see the general manager about why the team signed the kid. Of course, talk to the kid himself, he was happy with his ice and happy to play for a winning team.

 

And the sad part about that dad who thought his son was good enough to play at Duke was that, to this day, I don't think he ever "got it." I don't think he ever realized the incredible pressure and expectations he was placing on his son. the coach of that high school team told me several times that the son would relate stories about how his dad would reprimand him when he got home for not playing better, even had film sessions at home and had over-the-supper-table discussions about his performances.
if you met this youngster, you could sense the weight on his shoulders. it was so obvious. again, felt so bad for him.
also had the father of a very good female prep basketball player pull off similar stunts. he would fax me her game-by-game stats EVERY week and then call to make sure i got them, then give me a glowing report as if she was the next coming of Candace Parker. she got a college scholarship to a very good D-I program. she quit after two years. several of her very good friends told me later she quit because she was absolutely sick of trying to live up to what her father wanted to be...
if only they had had Gitmo at the time these two dads were pulling these kinds of stunts. incredible.

 

A new winner tonight:

Parents who rip the coach before you can get to him after a tough loss, putting him in an even worse mood.

 

A new one for me: Parents who complain about younger kids (mainly freshmen) getting playing time, even though their own little Johnny is a starter.