Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For Travel Soccer only, at what ages do you think it is acceptable to have parent coaches and/or assistant coaches?

Totally depends on the parent. My daughters had a parent coach who had played professionally himself. He was just as good as a paid coach, the team did really well, and we paid peanuts for travel soccer.

+1. Also, many travel coaches are not full time and never played the sport themselves. You have to evaluate each coach on their own merits, parent or club staff.

Hard pass on the parent coach or assistant coach. Just not worth the headaches.

It depends on the parent and if they can be objective and unbiased with their kid. Given what I see you get for the money around here, some quality parent coaches would be more than welcome.

Ugh -had a great response written out and lost it,
Short answer is it depends.
We have had paid coaches who, in order to make ends meet, had to coach multiple teams, hold private lessons, and camps on the side. They were stretched so thin that you couldn’t get a minute of their time - and we are with one of those clubs that apparently pays coaches well (although I have no clue what they means).
We are currently with a parent paid coaches that is a former pro (means very little in my experience) and puts more time in than any other coach I have ever seen. His child is also on the team and the top player. He should be playing up - it is more a detriment to his kid than to our team, if that makes sense.

My DC is on one of those teams, and it is difficult. But, we didn't know anything about travel soccer at the time. The hard part is the coach and club are good and respected in the area, but as a whole, they encourage the coach to "build a team" and the parent coach almost inevitably will build it with their kid in the 10/8. It took a while to figure out, but there are multiple teams in the club with parent coaches and the coach's kid in the 10/8. When my DC first joined, I was a little concerned about the parent coach, but now we will be leaving soon even though they have a good program and the coach is knowledgable and teaches a good version of the game. My DC is growing and learning a good game, so it is not bad by any real measure. But, it's hard to watch as your DC recognizes favoritism and has to navigate that along with the mind games it takes to keep the families on board to watch the coach "build a team." It's just hard to trust if the coaches are being as objective as possible or if they are doing what is best for their kid and then the other kids in that order. The other possibility is that they are not trained well enough in player development and they come from a high-level player perspective. Which is not bad, but maybe not the best at the younger ages without some training in young player development to make sure all players are moving forward with opportunities to learn. I will say, if you happen to land in the same club without a parent coach, it seems much better. I have seen that the team dynamic is different, but it pretty much is luck of the draw with the coach assignments.

I have a younger kid playing and if they decide to keep playing, we will make sure to pick another respected club, but no parent coaches to hopefully avoid some of the unnecessary headaches, and at least hope the kid is getting a fair shake. Not saying a parent coach at travel level is bad, but do be aware that there could be clashes and to me it seems the underlying issue will be trust in the fair development of all players.

To flip the coin a little, a non-parent coach could also have all of these issues, so it is no guarantee that it will be better. Adding to that, they may be so detached from the development of any player that they do not grow at all. There seems to be a lot of talk about that on this forum. So, that is another worry, but if the club has a development track record, then for the most part the coaches should be well trained and have a guide to use for what they are teaching the kids.

Being paid does not make them better. 100% coach and team dependent. Some parent coaches are excellent. Some are not. Some paid coaches are excellent. Some are not.

Anonymous wrote:For Travel Soccer only, at what ages do you think it is acceptable to have parent coaches and/or assistant coaches?

Totally depends on the parent. My daughters had a parent coach who had played professionally himself. He was just as good as a paid coach, the team did really well, and we paid peanuts for travel soccer.

Anonymous wrote:I’d like to believe that the paid ‘pro’ coaches out there have a far superior understanding of and ability to teach the game than a parent coach would. But I don’t. My kids have had both and have had good and bad experiences with both.

If a parent coach clearly knows the game, has experience coaching and playing at a competitive level, and runs organized practices that aren’t distinguishable from other travel teams, I wouldn’t discount it. But you certainly have to look out for red flags, like if the *kid never subs out, always plays center forward, has a difficult personality, etc.

*The coach’s kid

I’d like to believe that the paid ‘pro’ coaches out there have a far superior understanding of and ability to teach the game than a parent coach would. But I don’t. My kids have had both and have had good and bad experiences with both.

If a parent coach clearly knows the game, has experience coaching and playing at a competitive level, and runs organized practices that aren’t distinguishable from other travel teams, I wouldn’t discount it. But you certainly have to look out for red flags, like if the kid never subs out, always plays center forward, has a difficult personality, etc.

It depends. If they have never seen soccer before I’d say bad. Too hard to get up to speed. But it the parent was like the coach of Real
Madrid then maybe below U10.

Nope, been there, not a good coach.

Anonymous wrote:For Travel Soccer only, at what ages do you think it is acceptable to have parent coaches and/or assistant coaches?

We had a parent coach at U10 and we liked the coach a lot.

Only if the price was heavily discounted and ds were not that into soccer or played other sports. Meaning more for fun and the competition should be appropriately matched.

Travel soccer with parent coaches? No thank you.

For Travel Soccer only, at what ages do you think it is acceptable to have parent coaches and/or assistant coaches?