Reply to Are kids still doing it all? Rise of travel sports and scheduled kids.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP. As a rec parent, my goal with DD is just for her to learn some basics of the game and get some exercise. I would rather she be focused on academics, not athletics. Signed- Nerd who outearns all the jocks from my high school. :) [/quote]

Nobody wants to be a nasty troll like you. [/quote]

Uh no, there are a great many comments in this thread that are nasty and insulting to Rec families. [/quote]

I'm a rec-only parent and didn't feel insulted by this thread.[/quote]

I'm a former rec parent who had to quit because the girls softball coach screams at the girls "What the EFF is wrong with you?" When they make mistakes and he's allowed to coach even though we complained. I don't want to be part of that organization and I don't care if the people at the heart of it who refuse to clean house feel "insulted".[/quote]

Sheesh. I hope this isn't the softball league I volunteer with.

It's hard to be a rec league because you're stuck with only the volunteers you get/people whose arm you can twist (like the poster upthread who was an "assistant" coach and ended up taking over the team). That means a jerk who steps up may get to coach even though everyone in the organization knows he's a jerk. Cleaning house isn't as easy as you might think. I can think of like 3 coaches off the top of my head our league would love to get rid of - nothing as terrible as your story but lots of little things - and it's just not been possible.[/quote]

So the other families will leave. I would be shocked if our softball league had enough teams this year. Between foul mouthed dad and aggressive mean parents it was a toxic environment and people don't want to play it in anymore. The parents sucked the fun right out of it.[/quote]

I’ve had three kids in various rec leagues over the years and NEVER had this experience.  We have moved on to club/travel but have nothing but great memories of our years in those sports.  Caring coaches, kind parents.

Don’t give up - this could very well have just been one bad season and not a reflection of the rec program in your area or even the rec softball program, generally.[/quote]

We've been in a lot of rec orgs. This was just one of them, but we will not play in this one anymore. My kids are aging out of rec anyway. But it's sad about softball. Now my daughter just won't play anymore b/c she was just there for the social reasons and to be with friends. But, I offered this up as a reason people don't play rec and seek out clubs or travel. It's not that they are hyper competitive or want to overtrain their kids, sometimes (not always) it's because the rec offering is really lacking in a lot of areas: coaching, development, and a healthy environment.[/quote]

This makes sense, but realistically if one parent - as someone who is willing to put in work in a rec organization but is only one person - want to fix it how would they? One person can't [i]make[/i] parents volunteer. One person can't [i]make[/i] coaches be good (a coach clinic might help a bit, but how much can you do?). One person can't [i]make[/i] people be nice. Setting a culture takes at a minimum an entire in-group of people, right?

And you are talking simultaneously about aggresive mean parents and your DD being with friends - were the friends parented by better parents? I understand there's a tipping point, but doesn't basically every league have a bad parent or two or ten?[/quote]

Actually last softball season was illuminating. We thought we knew the parents well but softball brought out the real ugly side of some of these people that we didn't know was there. My daughter has switched friend groups this year for the better. We didn't like what we saw it all. She is focused on other activities and different friend groups. A lot of those people had younger siblings who also play with our younger son so we took him out of rec as well to focus on other things (Cub Scouts and swimming) to avoid the same pitfalls.

We voted with our feet and walked away.[/quote]

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