Reply to Travel team, 14 yr old not getting much/any playing time

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My son's coach would have benched him for having Mommy step in.  No, I'm not a troll.  My son's friend was benched for this very reason.

A 14 year old needs to talk to the coach himself, and pay attention to what he is told.[/quote]

I think at the 13-14 YO stage, there is a place for parents to be involved in the discussion as support for their child.  Not to barge in and yell at the coach, but to be part of a civil, production conversation.  To exclude parents really is just clubs and coaches taking advantage of the power dynamic between the adult coach and the child.  [/quote]

Mom in the background is different than Mom talking to the coach herself.[/quote]

This. Parents, it is REALLY important for kids to navigate these conversations themselves.[/quote]

No it isn’t.

Parents are paying the coach to coach their kid.   If a coach or club decides that they do not want to do the job they are hired and paid to do then that conversation must be with the person who signed the contract.

It is really very simple.  If a coach of a team believes a player is not up to their standard then do not put them on the team.  No problem.  If you take the money then the coach and team/club have to provide the agreed upon services.  Take the $$$$ - do the work.

Of course if there are disciplinary issues then additional approaches must be used.  But, kid sucks?  Oh well.  Work with what you have and learn from it.  Don’t take a kid who sucks because you want more money.

You, as a coach, want teens to talk to you about playing time?  Fine.  But, you must have that same conversation with the paying parent FIRST.  You don’t want to have that conversation with the paying parent?  You’re an adult.  Tell them why they are not getting what they paid for.

Now, your kid wants to have a discussion like - I want to play offense?  Okay, that’s a fair subject that you can coach your kid up on how to approach it with their coach.  Yes, behind the scenes you should email/text the coach ahead of time and say your kid wants to discuss xyz.  Most of the time these things can be addressed pretty easily.

As an aside - playing multiple positions is very important.  Doing so in scrimmages is fine.  Very few kids stay with one position as they get older.  Certainly, with college they are going to want some comfort level playing multiple positions.

One of my favorite parent/coach interactions happened with my daughter’s u16 team.  They were doing basically an indoor round robin tournament with a couple other teams staged as a private college showcase.  First game, for some reason the team’s coach was going to be late and had arranged a sub. to fill in.  Game starts and kids play a 30 minute half basically with no subs.  Then the second half gets going and a few weaker players are not in.  Get about 10 minutes into a 30 minute half and kids still are not in.  Mom of one of the kids who has not gotten in yet walks over (around the sideline) to ask the substitute coach what’s going on.  Why isn’t everyone playing?

When the regular coach got there he apologized to all the parents and made up the playing time.  It was pretty funny.  I’m sure that young coach was surprised when a mom walked over to ask what he was doing.

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