Soccer Team Bullies

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Quick update is that I got a call from the coach today. He noticed my son “wasn’t having fun” yesterday and his coach and parental antennae went up. Without giving too many specifics I told him I appreciated the call and mentioned while DS was being given a hard time by his teammates, we were working on mental toughness.

I don’t know if someone else said something to him, but I felt like he might have been fishing for information.

Nonetheless, initially appreciated the call and we both said we’d keep our eyes on this.

We’ll each this over the next few weeks. All good. And thanks for all the great advice here DCUM.

Best advice on this thread was to tell your son to punch the kid square in the face if it happens again.

No it wasn't. Punching is how you handle physical bullying. Verbal bullying has to be handled verbally. If a kid tells you you suck and you punch him, then your teammates will rightly blame you and the problem will get much worse.

Nah, a kid keeps ragging on you verbally, you drop him. 99/100. It takes care of the problem. I'm not saying...a kid says you suck once and you punch him, but if it gets to a certain point, you pop him.

That sounds more like the a solution for someone without the intellectual and social firepower to deal with the situation another way than the best solution to me. I like to be guided by Sun Tzu in these matters:

"Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities... It is best to win without fighting."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Quick update is that I got a call from the coach today. He noticed my son “wasn’t having fun” yesterday and his coach and parental antennae went up. Without giving too many specifics I told him I appreciated the call and mentioned while DS was being given a hard time by his teammates, we were working on mental toughness.

I don’t know if someone else said something to him, but I felt like he might have been fishing for information.

Nonetheless, initially appreciated the call and we both said we’d keep our eyes on this.

We’ll each this over the next few weeks. All good. And thanks for all the great advice here DCUM.

Best advice on this thread was to tell your son to punch the kid square in the face if it happens again.

No it wasn't. Punching is how you handle physical bullying. Verbal bullying has to be handled verbally. If a kid tells you you suck and you punch him, then your teammates will rightly blame you and the problem will get much worse.

I don’t know about that. It worked for me when I was growing up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unfortunately, bullying never stops until the bullied kid practices very hard. This not only improves his skills but more importantly greatly improves his/her self-confidence.

Being new to any team, there’s always a feeling of isolation unless the player joins with his/her friends too. This happened to my DD when she joined a team 2 years ago. While she was a decent player, she was new to the travel team environment. Hence, she didn’t understand some of the positioning and terminologies. She was fine after one season. In addition, she practiced a lot on her own and I noticed not only a spike in her skills but a huge spike in her confidence too. She’s now U13.

With my son, it was the opposite. He was easily one of the top three players on the team and the bullying came from some of the weaker skilled players, but physically larger. They couldn't stop him on the field so they went after him with cheap shots, both verbally and physically.

was he a jackass about being better? Resentment is normal if the kid is a jerk, otherwise the good kids are usually accepted

[Anonymous]

OP here. Quick update is that I got a call from the coach today. He noticed my son “wasn’t having fun” yesterday and his coach and parental antennae went up. Without giving too many specifics I told him I appreciated the call and mentioned while DS was being given a hard time by his teammates, we were working on mental toughness.

It's good that he noticed something was off, but how old are these kids? My son is a U13 and I cannot imagine his coach being concerned about whether he was "having fun." Concerned about whether he was being bullied, absolutely. But that's a different issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

OP here. Quick update is that I got a call from the coach today. He noticed my son “wasn’t having fun” yesterday and his coach and parental antennae went up. Without giving too many specifics I told him I appreciated the call and mentioned while DS was being given a hard time by his teammates, we were working on mental toughness.

It's good that he noticed something was off, but how old are these kids? My son is a U13 and I cannot imagine his coach being concerned about whether he was "having fun." Concerned about whether he was being bullied, absolutely. But that's a different issue.

Maybe it’s a boy/girl thing, but my dd is a similar age (U12) and the coach explicitly talked to the parents about how many girls drop sports as they hit 13/14 and how engaging them and having fun is the most important thing to keep them in sports

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

OP here. Quick update is that I got a call from the coach today. He noticed my son “wasn’t having fun” yesterday and his coach and parental antennae went up. Without giving too many specifics I told him I appreciated the call and mentioned while DS was being given a hard time by his teammates, we were working on mental toughness.

It's good that he noticed something was off, but how old are these kids? My son is a U13 and I cannot imagine his coach being concerned about whether he was "having fun." Concerned about whether he was being bullied, absolutely. But that's a different issue.

My bet would be someone said something to the coach (a parent?). He probably felt a responsibility to call but his approach of saying your son “wasn’t having fun” was his way of seeing if you’d mention the bullies. Who knows though.

I think it’s good he called.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unfortunately, bullying never stops until the bullied kid practices very hard. This not only improves his skills but more importantly greatly improves his/her self-confidence.

Being new to any team, there’s always a feeling of isolation unless the player joins with his/her friends too. This happened to my DD when she joined a team 2 years ago. While she was a decent player, she was new to the travel team environment. Hence, she didn’t understand some of the positioning and terminologies. She was fine after one season. In addition, she practiced a lot on her own and I noticed not only a spike in her skills but a huge spike in her confidence too. She’s now U13.

With my son, it was the opposite. He was easily one of the top three players on the team and the bullying came from some of the weaker skilled players, but physically larger. They couldn't stop him on the field so they went after him with cheap shots, both verbally and physically.

was he a jackass about being better? Resentment is normal if the kid is a jerk, otherwise the good kids are usually accepted

No. He's actually one of the quietest players on the team. Doesn't even celebrate when he scores. Bit of an introvert, but he's just really skilled at ball control and maybe they took his sort of coldness as looking down on them or something.

[Anonymous]

It's good that he noticed something was off, but how old are these kids? My son is a U13 and I cannot imagine his coach being concerned about whether he was "having fun." Concerned about whether he was being bullied, absolutely. But that's a different issue.


Maybe it’s a boy/girl thing, but my dd is a similar age (U12) and the coach explicitly talked to the parents about how many girls drop sports as they hit 13/14 and how engaging them and having fun is the most important thing to keep them in sports

That could well be, and I can't speak to the benefits of one approach vs. another. All I can say is that my son's coaches seemed dead serious about things from around U11 on, and expected the kids to be as well.

[Anonymous]

Tell your kid to pull the bully aside and tell him to say, “ I understand you’re insecure and that your parents don’t love you so you take it out on me, but if you’d don’t stop you’ll be severely hurt to the point of being a cripple. Trust me I am willing to go farther than you can imagine. Now, shut the f up and just play soccer you little pu$$y.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unfortunately, bullying never stops until the bullied kid practices very hard. This not only improves his skills but more importantly greatly improves his/her self-confidence.

Being new to any team, there’s always a feeling of isolation unless the player joins with his/her friends too. This happened to my DD when she joined a team 2 years ago. While she was a decent player, she was new to the travel team environment. Hence, she didn’t understand some of the positioning and terminologies. She was fine after one season. In addition, she practiced a lot on her own and I noticed not only a spike in her skills but a huge spike in her confidence too. She’s now U13.

With my son, it was the opposite. He was easily one of the top three players on the team and the bullying came from some of the weaker skilled players, but physically larger. They couldn't stop him on the field so they went after him with cheap shots, both verbally and physically.

was he a jackass about being better? Resentment is normal if the kid is a jerk, otherwise the good kids are usually accepted

No. He's actually one of the quietest players on the team. Doesn't even celebrate when he scores. Bit of an introvert, but he's just really skilled at ball control and maybe they took his sort of coldness as looking down on them or something.

In that case, the team just has an awful dynamic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
In that case, the team just has an awful dynamic

DS was on a team like this 2 years ago. Same age at the time. It was just very negative. It started with one player favored by the coach putting down other players and even yelling at them for making them lose the game. Coach encouraged it. The comments were really mean. The team fell apart the next year and many kids left for other clubs. The administration had been told this was a problem and didn't address it at all. You are lucky your child's coach doesn't tolerate that behavior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

OP here. Quick update is that I got a call from the coach today. He noticed my son “wasn’t having fun” yesterday and his coach and parental antennae went up. Without giving too many specifics I told him I appreciated the call and mentioned while DS was being given a hard time by his teammates, we were working on mental toughness.

It's good that he noticed something was off, but how old are these kids? My son is a U13 and I cannot imagine his coach being concerned about whether he was "having fun." Concerned about whether he was being bullied, absolutely. But that's a different issue.

My bet would be someone said something to the coach (a parent?). He probably felt a responsibility to call but his approach of saying your son “wasn’t having fun” was his way of seeing if you’d mention the bullies. Who knows though.

I think it’s good he called.

Would be willing to bet a nice parent or the manager gave the coach a heads up. Seems like a good team.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Quick update is that I got a call from the coach today. He noticed my son “wasn’t having fun” yesterday and his coach and parental antennae went up. Without giving too many specifics I told him I appreciated the call and mentioned while DS was being given a hard time by his teammates, we were working on mental toughness.

I don’t know if someone else said something to him, but I felt like he might have been fishing for information.

Nonetheless, initially appreciated the call and we both said we’d keep our eyes on this.

We’ll each this over the next few weeks. All good. And thanks for all the great advice here DCUM.

Coach here -

"wasn't having fun" may have been a nice way to phrase what we'd describe as a major change in attitude that would raise red flags. As coaches we don't see notice everything that happens during a session as odd as that may sound. For example when I give my team water breaks at practice I use that time to allow them to have their "own time" while I prep for the next drill, drink some water, talk to the other coaches in my age group on the field. There is obviously room for trouble there, but in over 10 years of coaching I've only ever had one team, and really it was one particular player where it became an issue that wasn't able to be resolved with a talk from me or a parent(s).

There are also plenty of other things that could be going on in a players life we don't know about; school, home life, boy/girl friend problems etc. And with social media being what it is... I gotta tell you it's gotten a lot harder to police.

I'm glad your coach caught on, or perhaps was tipped off by someone else. Peer pressure is part of team sports, and one of the life lessons kids learn, but bullying is another matter entirely. There can be a grey line sometimes, especially on the boys side, and each person reacts differently, but it's our job as coaches to create an environment conducive to learning.

Good luck with the rest of your season! Would love to heard a follow up later in the year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Quick update is that I got a call from the coach today. He noticed my son “wasn’t having fun” yesterday and his coach and parental antennae went up. Without giving too many specifics I told him I appreciated the call and mentioned while DS was being given a hard time by his teammates, we were working on mental toughness.

I don’t know if someone else said something to him, but I felt like he might have been fishing for information.

Nonetheless, initially appreciated the call and we both said we’d keep our eyes on this.

We’ll each this over the next few weeks. All good. And thanks for all the great advice here DCUM.

Coach here -

"wasn't having fun" may have been a nice way to phrase what we'd describe as a major change in attitude that would raise red flags. As coaches we don't see notice everything that happens during a session as odd as that may sound. For example when I give my team water breaks at practice I use that time to allow them to have their "own time" while I prep for the next drill, drink some water, talk to the other coaches in my age group on the field. There is obviously room for trouble there, but in over 10 years of coaching I've only ever had one team, and really it was one particular player where it became an issue that wasn't able to be resolved with a talk from me or a parent(s).

There are also plenty of other things that could be going on in a players life we don't know about; school, home life, boy/girl friend problems etc. And with social media being what it is... I gotta tell you it's gotten a lot harder to police.

I'm glad your coach caught on, or perhaps was tipped off by someone else. Peer pressure is part of team sports, and one of the life lessons kids learn, but bullying is another matter entirely. There can be a grey line sometimes, especially on the boys side, and each person reacts differently, but it's our job as coaches to create an environment conducive to learning.

Good luck with the rest of your season! Would love to heard a follow up later in the year.

OP here. Thank you. Your message helped! Will report back with an update. While our Thursday training was rained out, my son seemed excited to go and was bummed by the rain out which I was encouraged by.