Reply to Team parent strategies for non-responsive parents

Forum Index » Sports General Discussion

Reply to "Team parent strategies for non-responsive parents"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]14:56 -- most of these tasks can be done either a few minutes before the game starts, or during the game itself.  It's not a big lift.  Field prep is usually some dads out raking the fields and re-chalking lines if necessary.

If the team uses teamsnap, you can have a health check filled out in there -- thus eliminating the need to have a "covid" coach.  If someone needs to do the screening, that can also take place as kids arrive for warmups.  So you show up 5 minutes earlier than the kids are scheduled, and sit on the bleachers and check the kids in.

(not OP)[/quote]

14:56 here - sorry to hijack your thread, OP, I'm just finding this kinda fascinating (though entirely theoretically for me at this stage).

Yes, I see that a lot of these jobs are small, and not a big lift. But I also assume that "Majors" means you're not talking about five year olds. If my 11 year old is in Little League, I might not go to every single game. And when I do, I might often have other, younger kids in tow that make a volunteer task (even a small one) difficult to handle. Or I might be dropping him off for warmups and then running an errand and coming back. Or whatever. And again, for me personally, I could see a situation where I'm the Girl Scout troop leader, doing tons of work for that, and not planning on doing any volunteering for baseball, as it would just be too much.

I would absolutely expect to be ASKED. Perhaps even begged and pleaded with - and if it was a small task and my kid really loved baseball, I might even cave. But there's so much space, to me, between that and getting a "Here's your assigned volunteer times. Switch if you're busy" email which, again, if it wasn't made clear up front that pitching in was required, I would find really, really presumptuous.[/quote]

DP.  I am a Girl Scout leader, and I can tell you from years of experience that when you are begging and pleading with families over and over again to volunteer and no one does, and when the girls don't get to sell cookies or go on camping trips because you can't get volunteers, it gets really old after a while.  This is probably my last year as a leader because I'm so fed up with it.  The same thing happens with parent coaches, team managers, etc.  They agree to take on these roles for the benefit of everyone's kids, and then get burned out from the lack of help.  If you don't want your kid to lose the parent leader of their activity, you have to pitch in.  If I don't quit after this year, it will only be because we make it mandatory that people commit to volunteer roles for next year this spring, before they re-register their kids for next year.

In addition to being a troop leader, I also volunteer for both of my kids' sports teams.  The trick is to sign up early when the request goes out so you can pick something that suits you.  One is a rec team so it's really just snack duty, and by signing up early I can pick a convenient weekend for me.  The other is a travel team, and everyone is required to sign up for some role (or one will be assigned to them).  Some of the volunteer roles are for discrete events where they need a good chunk of time for the event, but only over the course of a week or so.  Others are less of a time commitment any given week, but go on all year long.  Since I have the year-long Girl Scout commitment, I prefer the discrete events, so as soon as that sign-up comes out I jump in to grab whatever suits me best rather than having to pick from the leftovers.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics