I have been asked on more than one occasion what is the hardest part of coaching kids. Is it the constant repeating of yourself just not to be listened to? No! Is it the ever changing attitudes of children? No! Is it the fact that most every kid seems to have some sort of ADHD? No! Is it never knowing who or what child is showing up to practice and game each day? Yes and No!

The hardest part about coaching is parents. Parents will make or break any new coach. I have learned one major thing while coaching. You have your steady every season coaches, and you have your one and done coaches. The one and done coaches get destroyed by parents to the point it don’t matter record they never want on a field ever again. The steady coaches, for the most part, have a core group of players they go into each season with. Which means parents they can stand. I actually personally have a few kids if it weren’t for the parent being awesome I’d rather not have them but parents that remember their snack day and come to practice and don’t miss games are more important than a good player with hard to handle parents.

What makes a parent hard to handle? Well, let’s do this in stages. The parent that takes a week to respond to a hello your kid is on my team. Please join the group for all the team details. These parents drive me crazy to a point of almost insanity. You signed your kids up. I am being prompt and have spent hours of my own time setting up a team management application with all team info, schedule, games, and even picture days. You can at least say hi, thank you, or okay. Just ignoring it is annoying.

The next stage is preseason. My biggest pet peeve with parents and what is hard to overcome is never bringing kids to practice. This goes on into the season when their kid isn’t playing much because they are always tired or aren’t playing well. Sorry, they were never at practice. I didn’t have a chance to build up stamina or make them anything of a player.

The next stage is in season. I think my biggest pet peeve is not telling me you’re out of town for a game. Standing there on the field waiting on that last player and no answers. Call no answer and later a text oops we are out of town. Sorry! I don’t care if you miss, but the courtesy of a hey, we won’t be there is awesome. The other thing that makes it hard on a coach is a parent who coaches the coach. Why isn’t my kid playing this position? Why is he not scoring, and why did you not teach him this?

Ok, let me stop and recognize I have not had to deal with most of these parents and the ones that got bad. I just never selected to let their kid play for me again. In good news, I’ve personally run into most good parents a few bad apples, but let’s talk for a minute about the worst of the worst ones. I will shout out all my team parents because none of these are you.

The parent chain smoking on the sidelines. Okay, I had a grandparents do this in baseball one season, but man, is this annoying and the cloud over the field while playing. I once called the park supervisor and had him go escort people out. The parent who wants to scream obscenities at the other teams children. Seriously, this happens. I had to stop one of my players’ moms from teaching another mom a lesson one time because of it. The ill fight the ref parent. Oh this one makes me mad and I have escorted a family off the field for it one game and pulled a ref out of a fight and physically removed him while the rest of the staff from the park came and removed the parent. These parents ruin sports for kids and make a coach just want to crawl in bed and die.

I remember my first real season coaching realizing I suck as a coach and going what do I do to fix it. I know now that in the recreational league, it’s more about luck of the draw than actual coaching. First off, you get a month to make 14 kids work together, and half of them have never played soccer before. Some games go good, some go bad. It’s all about making it fun for your team. So until I go travel or have a team that has 6  months of time together, I don’t worry about what happens. Just make it fun and try and find parents that want to make it fun also. If you run into the bad parents and it’s your first time coaching, just ignore them and focus on the good parents. Those kids will be back next season. The other parents already don’t want to deal with you again anyway.