You say in a serious voice, "Did you really think your kid is good enough to be moved up? I mean, no one else does. Perhaps it's time you face reality, you're kid just isn't that good." Then smile and walk away.

Once they get on the top team the same parents will do anything for more playing time. Coaches with no backbone have no place in competitive sports. There’s a local club where the head coach/director of coaching of the eCNL team will coward to any dad that challenges him. And they have a losing record as a result.

Anonymous wrote:Parents jockey all year to get player moved up teams.
Then it doesn’t happen and they start trashing everyone left and right
What do you say to these people to get them to stop?

You just don't engage on the topic. Avoid any parent in a club sport who is always trying to figure out how to get their kid on the "top team" or "top group". The reality is, if the kid is not already there, they probably aren't moving up.

I'm old now, so I will just say this directly to folks. They don't like to hear about reality, so they will generally start avoiding you.

How degrading. My dad never 'jockeyed' for us. If a Coach couldn't see it and we felt we were better than what we were getting, we put in the work and tried out elsewhere.

Who wants the job that daddy gets them? It's demoralizing. Plus, every other player and parent knows the reason why.

I sit back and watch the parents running around currying favor, as do my sons. It really levels out by the HS years. Parents can't do that crap anymore for the most part. It's weird if daddy is fighting your battles with a Coach at 16 when the kid should be advocating for himself.

You could either:

A) Tell them it’s much more productive for them to constantly nag their DC to train/practice all day long to improve instead of whining/complaining to other parents, etc.

B) Just walk away, stay away and/or pull your cell phone out the minute that start approaching you and make a call or read an article instead of engaging them.

"That's not a nice thing to say."
"I'm not comfortable with this discussion."

No worse than the parent trashing other people's kids from the sideline all year

Walk away and don’t give them an audience

The same thing you would say to people griping on this forum.

You can’t make other people stop (or start) doing anything. You can only control yourself.

Parents jockey all year to get player moved up teams.
Then it doesn’t happen and they start trashing everyone left and right
What do you say to these people to get them to stop?