Reply to Did Covid disrupt the parent volunteer pipeline

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]yes, it has been rough post Covid trying to get parents to help out.

Everyone still wants their kids to participate though.

I volunteer with our community sports org and we almost had to cancel our rec basketball season last winter because we had 1200 kids signed up to play and only 3 parents total willing to volunteer to help run it (you need a volunteer for each grade/age group). We were also short 20+ coaches and had to get high schoolers and middle schoolers to help out at the last minute because we begged and begged and parents simply would not volunteer to help out.

Following all that work and stress to get the season even started, we couldn't get parents to help out at the games running the clock or the score book. You have a PHD but can't run the basketball clock for a 5th grade house game?  People were dropping their kids off for the game and then hiding in their car in the parking lot until the game started to avoid being asked to help out. 
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[b]Most parents asked point blank will help out.[/b] A general call to action via email is likely to be ignored. My husband and I won’t commit to coaching a whole season because we can’t make every practice time and game, but we have filled in for an absent coach, been sideline refs, run scoreboards, helped with concessions, cleaned up the fields or whatever else is asked specifically. I think the highschoolers make great coaches too. The kids look up to them and they have no kids on the team so aren’t biased. Also helps those kids build their community service activities. They are a great untapped resource.[/quote]

Not the first quoted poster, but another person who helps run a league and I disagree with the bolded. [i]Some[/i] parents will volunteer when asked point blank. [b]Some will laugh in your face and act like you couldn't possibly understand their lives [/b](news flash: our family is pretty busy too). Oddly enough it is often the parent with 7 kids and a full time job whose spouse also works who will say yes and the parent with 2 kids and a more flexible job who will say no. Not always, but often.

Also our permitting county wouldn't let us run practice with no one over 18 in charge. High schoolers are great assistant coaches and yes the kids love them, but we can't use them as head coaches. The roles our organization has the most trouble filling all require the person doing them to be over 18. It's not fair to ask a high school kid to be the league scheduler and I don't think I can turn our taxes over to one.[/quote]

But…you don’t understand their lives.

You’re straight out saying you don’t understand how someone with two kids could be busy and someone with seven has time. Things like a parent dying of cancer come to mind as reasons I, a parent of one child with enough seniority to have flexibility at work, would have spent a soccer game in my car talking to doctors and family members and not running a score board.

Would I have laughed in your face? Probably not but I also wouldn’t think that you, a total stranger, were entitled to know my mother was dying and I was trying to figure out how to maximize my child’s time with her. People do not owe you.[/quote]

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