High School Coaches: Humor Me With Your "Crazy Parent" Stories

Distance to Sprints wrote:

. . .

4. Weirdest one had to be a girl on my XC/Track teams whose parents (who appeared to have lots of money) would show up in the middle of practice a couple of times a season and say they had to leave immediately for "vacation". They would be gone for a couple of days (during the week) and then come back. The daughter never told the other girls where they went. At a dinner the night before a meet out of town, I was sitting next to the dad and tried to make conversation by asking him what he did for a living. He completely dodged the question and seemed insulted that I asked (I quickly changed the subject). A couple of other parents later wondered why he had been so evasive.

Could her Mom be Dyanne Thorne from Greenwich Connecticut AKA Ilsa Harem Keeper Of The Oil Sheiks and the quickie vacations are Mega-petrodollar child sex trips?

I'm a successful coach and everybody in the community loves me. But this one dad also was a club coach and he trained all these kids over the summer and they took over my varsity. We worked together for a couple of years but when the boys were seniors he wanted them to run 55 miles a week over the summer. I put a stop to that! The previous year's league champ went from 1st to 26th off of my 30 mile per week summer/fall program. Showed that parent-coach a thing or two!

I was right out of college all pumped up, but wasn't hired as a coach until about 2 weeks prior to school starting. The first thing I did was to cut the schedule, which had us racing on Tuesdays and Saturdays, now just on Saturdays. I was at a school where 7&8 graders could make varsity. The girls team had a history of young studettes, We looked good on paper. The first race was in the state capital against the returning state champs in our division and about 15-20 teams from the top two divisions. Both the boys and girls ran well and finished in the bottom half. I was extremely pleased, as I didn't put any pressure on anyone and just wanted to see how they handled themselves. Over the season the boys came on like gangbusters, winning conference, 2d at sectionals, and losing state by 7 points (first time at state). The girls won conference, and placed 3d at sectionals(top 2 go to state). We lost by 1 pt to the defending champs-the same team that beat us by about 60 pts the first meet of the year. We had to go down to our 6th runner to break the tie, and it was a 7th grader. She had her best race of the year and on a tough course. Both parents were "marathoners". After the announcements, I saw where the parents were chewing her out. My runner was crying, I felt I shouldn't butt in. She cried on the bus for the 90 minute ride back to school. I took her aside and told her how proud we were of her, etc. The girls captain sat with her and consoled her also. When we got back to the school and her parents were there to pick her up, I let them have it with both barrels. Needless to say, after the state meet, I was gone and hung it up. Her parents continued to pressure her and she ended up with an eating disorder and never ran as fast ever again.

One more: had a girl 400 meter runner who was a total head case. The first two meets of the year were against weak teams and she wins easy . Third meet is against a team that has a faster 400 meter runner ( results are all in the paper). 20 minutes before her race she tells me she is sick and I scratch her. Fourth meet is against a team with slower 400 times. She wins again.

Fifth meet is against the defending league champ. Again she tells me she is sick. I tell her to run. Race starts and she isn't in it. Turns out she then went to the assistant coach and got her to scratch her.

She runs and wins a few more races against weaker comp . Then we race the regional champ . She goes first to me, then the assistant coach saying she is sick and we both say she has to run. Then she calls up her mom who shows up at the meet screaming her daughter is too sick to run, so we scratch her. The rest of the season proceeds with mom in attendance and her daughter running against slower teams and winning but getting sick and being scratched against faster runners,

We don't give the kid an end of the season award and her mom complains the the AD that her daughter was undefeated in the 400 and still wasn't an award winner .

I don't know what made him say this but a friend of mine who was a coach for a number of years stepped away and said the only way he would ever go back to coaching is at an orphanage

Kid was running down the final straight away about to qualify for states. He's stumbling from exhaustion, his mom runs out onto the course to help him and he gets dq'd. They still qualified as a team so it ended up being not as bad as it could have been.