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

Ok, I've decided the answer to this question. It's definitely wrestling parents/fans.

I was shooting the state meet finals today. In three separate bouts, parents/family snuck under the rope barrier and got as close to the mat as they could (which meant right behind me) and starting screaming their heads off and "coaching" their loved ones.

One asshole actually did more coaching than the kid's actual coach. My favorite part? End of the second period, the asshole behind me screams to one of the guys on the mat to get his brother to look at him. Brother does and the asshole goes "You've got to win this!". Wow. Sound coaching advice there, douche.

At first it didn't bother me, but by the time the second person did this, I started to get pissed. So, since I was just shooting and not covering the meet, I decided to root for whoever was going against these parents' kids. It worked. In all three bouts, the obnoxious people had to watch their loved ones lose. I left with a big smile on my face.

 

Our prep guy wrote in his blog this week bout a coach going to a different school, saying there were better athletes at the new school.
Old school's parents have gone ballistic.. .he never said there were lousy athletes at the old school, but that;s what they read -- morans...

 

A decade ago, I was covering a divisional state wrestling tournament when one parent of a senior who went two-and-out in the double-elimination tournament wanted to be sure I included his son in the article and even told me exactly what to write: "That he was a valuable member of the team."
I might have taken him a little more seriously if I couldn't smell the booze on his breath.

 

I had that one over a decade ago at my small town paper. Parents wanted me to 'do an expose' on why the school superintendent's freshman son got to play on varsity while costing a senior a spot on the team.

I told them that as soon as they could meet me in a parking garage with paperwork proving that the superintendent forced the coach to put his son on the team, that I would write the 'expose'. I don't think too many of them got the 'All the President's Men' reference. They weren't too bright.

The freshman wasn't a bad player, either. He was usually the first or second guy off the bench.

 

i remember back when the high schools began consolidating in our area (Louisiana) and you had outstanding black athletes coming into programs that consisted totally of white players.
suddenly, there would be five blacks starting instead of the normal white dudes. and parents of these white players would sometimes ask, "why doesn't our coach play more white players?" and bitch about it.
it was so obvious it wasn't even funny how much better the black players were than the white. not even close.
they's ask me and I would tell 'em, "m'am, do you realize how good these players are (the black players)?" they just couldn't comprehend their little boy being beaten out for a starting role by a black player.
even to this day, in some very remote and uneducated areas, i hear that reaction. incredible. i just walk away when i hear that crap. totally ridiculous and ignorant.

 

Nahhhhhhhhhhh.

 

That's when you end your article with "Little Johnny Sunshine also competed for Podunk High Saturday, losing badly to two opponents whose parents had a BAC of less than .30."

 

I would like to add lacrosse parents to the list. Got an angry phone call yesterday from a parent saying I had received all these emails from their media person and nothing is in the paper. Well I haven't received anything in two months. I actually like watching college lacrosse.

Yesterday's paper, we are a weekly where the lacrosse parents are was less than a full page. I had boys and girls soccer, track, baseball and softball on the page and barely got all that in. Now, lacrosse (a club sport) sends me a six-page report on club lacrosse from the Division I team to the first-second grade club. Sheesh.

 

incredibly, so far, this prep spring sports season has been very quiet in regards to any parents fussing about coverage or whining that son or daughter didn't get name in paper or that we like School A better than School B or whatever...
but there's still a couple of months to go.
it's just too freakin quiet for me, leading me to think it's the proverbial calm before the storm. ;D

 

Parents who decide the cool thing to do is crowd the court and try to elbow me out when I'm taking photos.

 

Not the first time this has happened to me, but yesterday I had a basketball mother accuse me of being a racist because I didn't include any quotes from an interview I did with her Hispanic daughter after a state semifinal.

Actually, I didn't include the daughter's quotes because they were all one-line incomplete sentences. And she wasn't the only player who was like that. Her white teammates were just as bad and their quotes, too, didn't get in because they couldn't finish a sentence with any coherency.

I can handle being called stupid or ignorant or uncaring or insensitive. But it's a lot harder to tolerate being called a racist.

 

RickStain...gotcha you one better than that. i had a dad several years ago come up to me before I was about to snap a team pic and proceeded--in front of everybody--to tell me I was holding the camera wrong, had the light angling off of the faces wrong, etc., and more etc.
After Mr. Eastman Kodak got through lecturing me, I said, "sir, at the next photo op you and I might be involved in, you go ahead and snap the pic and email it to me, complete with full names of all individuals in the picture."
most condescending parent I have ever dealt with. for lack of tact, that rates No. 1 in my book of "The Many Ways in Which Parents Can Fuck Up Youth Sporting Events."