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

Got a good one from a parent last week. Our prep area has swim teams, but they're really low on the totem poll. It's just not that big here. However, we do have a weekly column focusing on swimming and a few other prep sports we cover, but don't staff until the big meets. A way of rewarding all the kids that, "work just as hard as the other kids."

End up doing a feature on a kid from a bigger school who broke a handful of school records this year. It was an advance of the state meet (where they will get killed by the other schools in the area, another reason why we don't cover swimming).

Of course, we get one e-mail from a parent wondering why we chose "Big School A" and not "Big School B". Writes this 1,000-word e-mail, and there's nothing I like better than long-winded e-mails from parents that any good copy editor would boil down to one line:

"Write more about my kid."

 

Holy shit. If I ever had a CC parent bitch to me, there's no way I could keep from laughing.

I mean, come on.

 

It's always cyclical. My first year, I went through wars with the volleyball, but the bad parents all had seniors, so they were gone the next year. The parents and kids that were left didn't give a shit. The golf parents were great, until a new group of kids came up and the star player's dad was an assistant, then I couldn't get anything right.

Wrestling was the biggest pain in the ass for me. They had real esteem issues in our area. I guess being a smaller draw than junior varsity girls basketball will do that.

Well, we had one major school with a wrestling program at my first stop. I knew the problems we had in the past, so I decided to get off to a quick start on wrestling matches to deflect any criticism. Season starts, they have three league matches to begin with, we cover all three with photos.

I get a voice mail a few weeks into the season, complaining about the coverage from star wrestler's mom, and she and her husband want a meeting with me - and the publisher.

Publisher already knows I've had it with them, but she's the diplomatic type, and invites them in.

So mom and dad show up and I ask them what's wrong with the coverage. "You haven't covered enough meets."

So I ask, how many meets have you had? "Three," mommy says.

I pull out three papers, with each meet on the front page and with a photo. Granted, they all weren't centerpieces, but they were there.

I showed them to her. Then she says, "You still haven't covered enough meets."

I looked at my publisher, got out of my chair, and walked out.

 

We've got a writer who has won a few marathons and is one of the top runners in the state on terrain and pavement. If CC parents complain, they are deferred to him. They never call again once they know we have someone with more knowledge of the sport than all the local coaches combined.

 

Covered wrestling for six years now and I've never had a problem with those parents.

My favorites* are middle school/JV parents who wonder why we haven't covered any of their son/daughter's games.

 

Amen, Texas.

 

It's been my experience that parents suck not by sport but rather by school.

The paper I work for has eight schools in the county. It's kind of a weird set up in that there are three high schools in the main city, but two other school districts come into the city as well, and those high schools are at least 10 miles from the main city. I live in one of those districts, yet the parents in that district constantly demand more and more coverage.

The best is when they email me, saying, "I know you all live in Podunk, but did you know that Bumblefuck High has 80 percent of their students from Podunk?"

I love being able to replay, "Yes I understand that given my property taxes go to the Bumblefuck district."

I have never had someone reply to that. They want to be treated like Podunk, but the fact remains we aren't the Bumblefuck Gazette. We are the Podunk Gazette.

 

I'll follow up with the "everyone" sentiment.

I can't think of one sport where I haven't had complaints about coverage.

One of my all-time favorites was from volleyball just a few months back when there was this 1,000 word email about how we hadn't done any stories on this conference champion volleyball team, blah, blah, blah and how they deserved coverage. Of course, the day I received that email, I was finishing a 25-inch feature about that team that was set to run the next day. I really, really, really hate when that happens.

Speaking of wrestling, set to cover the state finals in my state so I was peaking around at the hyperactive message board...at least four threads in the last 24 hours bitching about lack of coverage in various papers. It had all of the goodies... "Our kids work harder to stay in shape than basketball players do", "Our kids get good grades and come from good homes, not like the 30-point scoreres with C averages from single parent homes in basketball", et al.

So, the more I type, I guess swimming/wrestling types bug me the most since they're so defensive of their own sport and so jealous of every true spectator sport. Sorry...let's be honest...your sports suck. They're boring, have forever long meet, are rarely competitive until the absolute highest level and, let's be completely honest, you'd rather be at a basketball game too, but your kid sucks at normal sports.

 

Hey, those phone-calling parents work hard, too.

The sense of entitlement from school-board members with kids playing is often stunning. Even scarier is that they do often wield power.

 

"I have never had someone reply to that. They want to be treated like Podunk, but the fact remains we aren't the Bumblefuck Gazette. We are the Podunk Gazette."

My last job: three primary schools and 10 periphery schools. Six-man sports staff, not one of the six from within 100 miles of the area. The collection of "It's obvious you are all from XXX school" e-mails and comments was huge. Sometimes we'd all be obviously from all three main schools in the same day in different complaints about the same stories.

 

We had one parent who sat on city council. He was upset we ran a story about football players getting busted for drinking. You talk about power-hungry, he got into it with my editor and wanted to know if the police chief had put him up to it, or the city manager or anybody else in the chain of command. He canceled his subscription and walked out. One of the biggest jerks I ever ran across. Somehow, his two sons who played football in college were pretty decent human beings

 

Coaches who have kids on the team.