Reply to Little League and parent arrogance

Forum Index » Sports General Discussion

Reply to "Little League and parent arrogance "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Years ago when my son was 8, he played Little League (Vienna) and had the misfortune of being on teams two seasons in a row where the dads/coaches really thought their sons were headed for the big leagues. The coaches barely played the lesser skilled kids (my son was in this group) and ignored all but a handful of players. The boys are all in high school now and the kids who were going to be Cal Ripken aren’t even playing baseball (or any sport, for some of them) anymore. I occasionally wonder if the dads ever think back on how they coached those teams and regret being so myopic. Just wishful thinking on my part?[/quote]

When my son was 5 and we were signing him up for Little League T-Ball my brother who had kids in Little League warned us- don't sign him up unless you can be at least an assistant coach. Turned out to be excellent advice. I ended up volunteering for the Board and DH was an assistant coach for both our boys so they played the best positions, got tons of time pitching and catching, and batted at the top of the line up, played in all stars up until 10U. One son stopped playing baseball after that and the other one didn't want to take it so seriously after that and stopped playing at 13.

Absolutely no regret from the coaches. DH hung out with his coach friends. Kids are in high school and half of their kids no longer play baseball. They were talking about how they all had a good time and were glad their kids had the opportunity to play whatever position they wanted. The best kids who didn't have dads coaching really did get a lot of playing time as well.

Your son was "less skilled". Did you play catch with him, take him to the batting cages, get a batting coach? [b]So much about life is who you know and your connections or you have to work twice as hard. Why would Little League be any different? [/b][/quote]

And people wonder why LL is declining in numbers….at least this poster’s DH and his friends openly admit it. So gross.

This is more or less how our LL was run also. No sour grapes as my DSs always made the all star teams (both pitched well at those ages) but many of their deserving friends did not, over the years.

Doesn’t end up mattering in the end (most of the dadball kids are not still playing in high school anyway) but it is truly sad that little league is this way. It is one of the reasons kid move to club ball- same issues there but at least kids are free to move to a different team if there are problems. It is also one of the reasons kids drop the sport- being parked in RF for 2 innings a game while the coaches’ kids play the more exciting roles has to be so boring at that age. [/quote]

The question OP asked: I occasionally wonder if the dads ever think back on how they coached those teams and regret being so myopic. Just wishful thinking on my part?
And the answer is: Of course not. What parent coach is going to look sit around looking back at what happened 6-8 years ago with regret and think, " I should have played that kids who wasn't very good more".

It is a big sacrifice for most parents to coach. My husband is a teacher and there were a lot of days he did not look forward to spending all day with junior high school students, hustling away from work,  then spending more time supervising rowdy kids in the late afternoon/evenings.  So why is it gross? It is laughable that if he has regrets it is going to be over the kids who played RF. The vast majority of the bench/right fielders had parents who couldn't even be bothered to ever play catch with them or take them to the batting cage or merely watch a few games of baseball so they knew how baseball was played. [/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