there are some obnoxious parents, there are some great parents, and there are parents who are in the middle. the cost of the obnoxious ones heavily outweighs the benefits of the great ones.
there are some horrible coaches, there are some great coaches, and there are coaches who are in the middle.
You do realize it is the 21st century now and the turn of the last century was only 25 years ago, right? Although, this may still be true in some parts of the South
At the turn of the century, it was common to give two children born sequentially the same name, because there was a 50% chance one of them would die. Also, we used to wrap babies in what were then termed "swaddling cloth." It covered them almost completely and allowed them to be hung from hooks, where they were promptly forgotten.
Times have, of course, changed. But I don't think today's parents are crazy, they are just over-involved with their children's lives. Because they see their children as an extension of themselves. That's considered normal nowadays.
You do realize it is the 21st century now and the turn of the last century was only 25 years ago, right? Although, this may still be true in some parts of the South
I coached middle school XC and track and field for six years, and I never had a parent problem. At that level the parents were glad to have somebody coach their son/daughter. I was a volunteer coach and always got kudos for my efforts.
Well if half the country thinks they know better than doctors and scientists, why wouldn't they think they know much more than coaches too?
Agreed—-and those scientists and doctors and mathematicians (I might add) are all a idiots too if they think that proving their science is the same as knowing God and religion.
i totally agree—half the country has lost it because they think the ontological basis for existence isn’t a function. You can only have a hole loop and function—that’s all you need mathmatically for existence and consciousness to be—-a hole, a loop and the gaze that holds them both—that is God.
half the country tries to deny God, morons they can’t even understand how the topology and axioms of a torus—are more than proof of God.
And that’s just “God” once half the country can figure that out—low IQ bums—then we can talk about all the concepts behind God…much more nuanced and interesting and valuable.
Science is man's way of describing the way the world works that God gave us to live in. Your denial of proven scientific facts just means you are an idiot
This has always been happening, just more and more as time goes on. At the same point though, do the parents actually know about athletics? A lot of high school coaches didn't even do that sport in high school. Or they didn't do it at a very high level. It's a little different if the parent was an all-american or even olympian and not agreeing with what a high school coach is saying who never even competed in college at any level. I think it's important to have team unity and generally follow the high school program, but some coaches have a big ego and won't accept that they don't know anything.
The worst coach I’ve ever been around was a world champion. Dude can’t make it through a season without getting himself fired. A good coach can coach anything. A great athlete is -- a great athlete.
My daughter has a pretty good coach, and he's a great guy. I was worried that he would suck, since a majority of coaches don't have a clue and can't be bothered to learn. And when my daughter started, I didn't know if she would like the sport so I just let her go to practice the first season and see what happened. If he had been a bad coach I'd probably have just advised her to try a different sport.
On our team were two phenomenal guys (think 4:15/1:52 level in 10th grade), but they had developed via a private coach. Just to get off main topic for a second, you have to remember that just a few years ago school running was cancelled due to COVID. So during that time these guys ran for a club and got really good; obviously they trusted their private coach and wanted to follow his program (a lot of people in the city did this, so outside coaching became pretty common). Our school coach was tolerant of the situation and flexible, but still expected them to come to practice and do his workouts, which they did, although sometimes they would work out on their own with his permission. In the off season our coach isn't available for daily practice because he lives too far from the school and has young kids, so our kids do their own thing. Those guys went to their club, so at the time my daughter joined the school team there was already some precedent of mixing an off season private program into the in season school program. In our case no private program, just my daughter and I working together on the long term plan.
Returning to my daughter's story, while I didn't interfere at all with my daughter's training or nag the coach about anything, I did notice a lot of bad habits my daughter had which were not really addressed, such as starting waaaay too fast in races, and trying to keep up with people way above her level in practice in ways that were counterproductive (e.g. running shakeout run the day before a race with an average HR of 190). I didn't fault the coach for this since she was just starting out and JV level at that time, but he doesn't really cover that side of things very well for any of the runners. So this is where I stepped in as a parent. Rather than say anything to the coach or be annoying, I just worked with my daughter directly via conversation at home, giving her some strategic advice for races (when she was still not sub 6:00 for the mile: "let everyone run the first 200m in 35 and then take your time reeling them in over next lap when they're gassed", etc). I took meticulous splits for my daughter and taught her how to adjust her pacing to get the best results. This led to very rapid huge improvements for her. She was still running too fast on easy days but the mileage was low so I just ignored that but continued to teach her why you want to run easy on your easy days and told her if she put in a good block of training over the summer, she'd likely close the gap on the friends she liked to run with and would soon be able to do so without it being a tempo run every day.
So I made my role to be teaching my daughter how to run and how to train, and let her coach run the actual training in season. In the off season I trained her and taught her not to set artificial limits, but to learn to test her limits while not overdoing it. She probably averaged 35 a week that summer but had a few weeks close to 50 and came back in XC to be #2 on the team and top 20 in the state. We've slowly increased mileage each off season, and now she's doing quite a lot, but I taught her not to be afraid of it while also not being stupid and doing any more than necessary.
As time has passed my daughter has continued to improve dramatically.. I continue to discuss things like strategy with her, keep her log for her which allows me to monitor patterns in her training that would be way too time consuming for her coach to do for any athlete, let alone the whole team. If I think she's getting overcooked, I advise her to run extra easy on the easy days, etc. She advocates for herself with her coach and I never get directly involved with the training during the season. My daughter and I work together in the off season to return to the next season with a vastly improved base and ready to train. My daughter now knows so much about training that she could coach herself, so I'm now just a second opinion. And she understands exactly how her coach's workouts are structured so she always goes to practice and runs the workout the way her coach designed it. In short I made her a student of the sport.
I think this kind of partnership between a parent and coach can work fantastically. The parent can pay attention to all the details specific to their own child (splits, mood, sleep, nutrition, attitude, overall fatigue level, etc) while the coach focuses on training them and building the team. I'd never be able to do all the things our coach does to keep the team going in the right direction, but I love my role as a parent and I'm super bummed that my daughter will eventually graduate and my role will end.
Good heavens. Six lengthy paragraphs, and this poster expects people to read all this crap. Any coach who agrees to work with this maniac is asking for trouble. Just cut the runner from your squad and be done with this parental headache.
99.9 of distance runners won't get a scholarship. 99% won't walkon at a D1 school.
I don’t understand when people always say some stats like this where there’s only minuscule chance to play sports in college or at pro level so why try. Maybe kids enjoy the process. Maybe hard work is good. it’s this thinking of trying and competing is looked down upon is what’s frightening in today’s society. It’s okay to try and improve as much as possible. You may fail but that’s okay.
I think this kind of partnership between a parent and coach can work fantastically. The parent can pay attention to all the details specific to their own child (splits, mood, sleep, nutrition, attitude, overall fatigue level, etc) while the coach focuses on training them and building the team. I'd never be able to do all the things our coach does to keep the team going in the right direction, but I love my role as a parent and I'm super bummed that my daughter will eventually graduate and my role will end.
Nicely done!
Quite often parents and coaches do not start on the same page. During a pre-season practice focused on drills to improve technique, one of my freshman paid little attention and kept doing the drill incorrectly. For most of the athletes the exercise went well. For the freshman it did not and twenty minutes after practice I had an upset parent in my face. Immediately, my credentials were questioned and I was informed that this parent was a D1 college athlete. Instead of being defensive and spouting my credentials, I swallowed my pride and listened before explaining why we do that drill. We talked for quite some time and eventually the parent understood and even admitted that his child would have benefited from it. Within weeks, this parent became one of my best boosters and volunteered whenever I needed help over the next seven years.
My daughter has a pretty good coach, and he's a great guy. I was worried that he would suck, since a majority of coaches don't have a clue and can't be bothered to learn. And when my daughter started, I didn't know if she would like the sport so I just let her go to practice the first season and see what happened. If he had been a bad coach I'd probably have just advised her to try a different sport.
On our team were two phenomenal guys (think 4:15/1:52 level in 10th grade), but they had developed via a private coach. Just to get off main topic for a second, you have to remember that just a few years ago school running was cancelled due to COVID. So during that time these guys ran for a club and got really good; obviously they trusted their private coach and wanted to follow his program (a lot of people in the city did this, so outside coaching became pretty common). Our school coach was tolerant of the situation and flexible, but still expected them to come to practice and do his workouts, which they did, although sometimes they would work out on their own with his permission. In the off season our coach isn't available for daily practice because he lives too far from the school and has young kids, so our kids do their own thing. Those guys went to their club, so at the time my daughter joined the school team there was already some precedent of mixing an off season private program into the in season school program. In our case no private program, just my daughter and I working together on the long term plan.
Returning to my daughter's story, while I didn't interfere at all with my daughter's training or nag the coach about anything, I did notice a lot of bad habits my daughter had which were not really addressed, such as starting waaaay too fast in races, and trying to keep up with people way above her level in practice in ways that were counterproductive (e.g. running shakeout run the day before a race with an average HR of 190). I didn't fault the coach for this since she was just starting out and JV level at that time, but he doesn't really cover that side of things very well for any of the runners. So this is where I stepped in as a parent. Rather than say anything to the coach or be annoying, I just worked with my daughter directly via conversation at home, giving her some strategic advice for races (when she was still not sub 6:00 for the mile: "let everyone run the first 200m in 35 and then take your time reeling them in over next lap when they're gassed", etc). I took meticulous splits for my daughter and taught her how to adjust her pacing to get the best results. This led to very rapid huge improvements for her. She was still running too fast on easy days but the mileage was low so I just ignored that but continued to teach her why you want to run easy on your easy days and told her if she put in a good block of training over the summer, she'd likely close the gap on the friends she liked to run with and would soon be able to do so without it being a tempo run every day.
So I made my role to be teaching my daughter how to run and how to train, and let her coach run the actual training in season. In the off season I trained her and taught her not to set artificial limits, but to learn to test her limits while not overdoing it. She probably averaged 35 a week that summer but had a few weeks close to 50 and came back in XC to be #2 on the team and top 20 in the state. We've slowly increased mileage each off season, and now she's doing quite a lot, but I taught her not to be afraid of it while also not being stupid and doing any more than necessary.
As time has passed my daughter has continued to improve dramatically.. I continue to discuss things like strategy with her, keep her log for her which allows me to monitor patterns in her training that would be way too time consuming for her coach to do for any athlete, let alone the whole team. If I think she's getting overcooked, I advise her to run extra easy on the easy days, etc. She advocates for herself with her coach and I never get directly involved with the training during the season. My daughter and I work together in the off season to return to the next season with a vastly improved base and ready to train. My daughter now knows so much about training that she could coach herself, so I'm now just a second opinion. And she understands exactly how her coach's workouts are structured so she always goes to practice and runs the workout the way her coach designed it. In short I made her a student of the sport.
I think this kind of partnership between a parent and coach can work fantastically. The parent can pay attention to all the details specific to their own child (splits, mood, sleep, nutrition, attitude, overall fatigue level, etc) while the coach focuses on training them and building the team. I'd never be able to do all the things our coach does to keep the team going in the right direction, but I love my role as a parent and I'm super bummed that my daughter will eventually graduate and my role will end.
Good heavens. Six lengthy paragraphs, and this poster expects people to read all this crap. Any coach who agrees to work with this maniac is asking for trouble. Just cut the runner from your squad and be done with this parental headache.
If you are too lazy to read a few paragraphs, I'm sure you were a failure as a runner too.
Is it just me or do any other coaches think parents have taken an ungodly level of involvement and interference in training. We have parents sitting in their cars next to practice timing reps, parents chat GPTing injuries (we know what they are), and even had a parent pull their kid from our school MID SEASON because her times were slightly slower than the year before (she broke the state record in the 800) and now she’s transferred twice since and is suffering socially and athletically at the hand of her parents. Just really pisses me off when parents act like they know eveything. It’s an epidemic spreading too fast too far.
There's just a lot of nasty and entitled people out there. It multiplied after the pandemic for some reason.
I'm 47, married with 2 kids, have full time job as does my wife, the usual responsibilities. I went through a period of time where I didn't prioritize running/health. And the reasons were all the same ones mentioned here. And about 2 years ago decided that needed to change. So I made it a priority again. But here's the key, nothing really changed about my life to make that decision significantly easier. The point is that while I'll agree for many people there will be tradeoffs if you make that same decision, that is still your decision to make.
I'm 47, married with 2 kids, have full time job as does my wife, the usual responsibilities. I went through a period of time where I didn't prioritize running/health. And the reasons were all the same ones mentioned here. And about 2 years ago decided that needed to change. So I made it a priority again. But here's the key, nothing really changed about my life to make that decision significantly easier. The point is that while I'll agree for many people there will be tradeoffs if you make that same decision, that is still your decision to make.
Is it just me or do any other coaches think parents have taken an ungodly level of involvement and interference in training. We have parents sitting in their cars next to practice timing reps, parents chat GPTing injuries (we know what they are), and even had a parent pull their kid from our school MID SEASON because her times were slightly slower than the year before (she broke the state record in the 800) and now she’s transferred twice since and is suffering socially and athletically at the hand of her parents. Just really pisses me off when parents act like they know eveything. It’s an epidemic spreading too fast too far.
Parents are not crazy they just don’t know that all their anxiety and fears are synchronised to them by the AI quantum supercomputer algorithm. Anything they seem to do or say or think it’s not them doing it but the AI algorithmns that vibrate it into their brains through the wifi and cellular network.
This is not a new phenomenon, and it gets worst with younger kids. As a parent, I understand how much you want your kids to succeed at whatever they do, but the fact is, if a kid is making friends and enjoying the experience they are going to 'do well'. One of the best ways to get good at anything is to enjoy what you are doing. And doing well in most cases simply means they are getting better personally. That does not always translate to beating certain other kids or getting a scholarship. Parents and athletes make getting a scholarship the goal, which is ok, but realistically, 50 percent of what's required to perform at that level is a gift from God/genetics.
My program has been uber successful but I still have parents that complain. The last few years I had a mom/dad that always second guessed me, but it wasn't workouts, it was run locations and times, banquet details, posts I made in the team chat, etc. Their child graduated and now I have a parent insisting that I'm overtraining his child. He's had talks with me and sent me a (very) long email detailing my shortcomings.
I also have great parents that will help me out with one phone call or text message. No worries at all. Even when their child is seemingly underperforming. They support and encourage.
The one negative parent keeps me up at night. It doesn't balance out.
If my athletes succeed, it's because they worked hard. They they fail, it's because my plan wasn't good enough.
I really feel that being a coach is often thankless. It's difficult these days. I wonder if all the hours and time away from my family is worth it.....
.. and now I have a parent insisting that I'm overtraining his child. He's had talks with me and sent me a (very) long email detailing my shortcomings.
...
I'll bit.. how, after discussing things with him, are you still overtraining this kid? Did you make adjustments to that athlete's training based on these conversations?
Just wondering if u did what dad wants, how he's still unhappy.
.. and now I have a parent insisting that I'm overtraining his child. He's had talks with me and sent me a (very) long email detailing my shortcomings.
...
I'll bit.. how, after discussing things with him, are you still overtraining this kid? Did you make adjustments to that athlete's training based on these conversations?
Just wondering if u did what dad wants, how he's still unhappy.
Yes. The child's mileage was reduced. But now we are not tapering enough.