OMG Sports Parents Are Nuts

[JJJ]

Just a few blurbs from our local sports scene:

*Grandpa gave his 10 year old grandson a list of the other 10-year olds in his league and asked him to rank them as good or bad players and is now bragging about how accurate his grandson is.

*Dad of a 13 year old has hired a personal trainer, strength coach and nutritionist to work with his daughter because he feels she should have made the 16U team this year and wants to make sure she makes it next year instead of staying with her own age group

*Dad of another 13-year old who barely got the last spot on her team is talking to everyone as if his daughter is a 1st liner and can't believe that the coaches want her to work on some specific skills before the regular season starts

*Parents from a 12 year old team are bragging about how they got most of the best girls and are going to win the state tournament - over 6 months from now.

*Parents gave false info to other parents to try and keep kids away from tryouts so that their child had a better shot at making the team.

*A program director pushed through a restrictive rule that has resulted in about 30 girls not being able to play for their first-choice club.

I swear I know way too many difficult child-adults that think they are easy child. At least our difficult children know they are difficult

 

[AnnieO]

in my humble opinion the parents are usually worse than the kids.

We had parents throw a fit this year because the head coach did not request one of the sub coaches back. They insisted on moving their son to another team. The league said no so they yanked him out. This poor kid LOVES football.

Sigh. I just like the people I hang with at the games... And watching my son.

 

[donna723]

You have no idea how glad I am to be out of all that! My son played ball for eight years, starting with tee-ball, so we've seen it all! If they kept the parents out of it, the kids would be a lot better off!

Our community is so small, they usually could only come up with two teams of each age group. One of the coaches (who also happened to be the league president) was coaching the 11 & 12 year olds when his own son was 12. There can be a huge difference in sizes of the kids at that age and they had always divided up the 11 and 12 year olds so they wouldn't have all the bigger kids on one team. All the teams they played against divided up their kids that way too. UNTIL this one guys kid was 12, and that year he decided to put all the 12 year olds on one team and the 11 year olds on the other! Of course, the 12 year olds won every game they played ... and the 11 year olds lost every game but one! Mine was 11 that unfortunate year. The next year, when his kid was in another age group, it went back to the way it had always been!

Some parents are just plain nuts! I'll never forget hearing our elementary school principal talk about a kids ball game that he had umpired. He didn't get paid for umpiring, he just did it because they had a hard time finding umpires, and he had always been more than fair in calling the games. He called one little boy out at the plate - it was a kid from the visiting team, and the catcher had tagged him out. It didn't bother the boy, but his mother in the bleachers turned into a mad woman! She got up and started screaming and cussing at the principal ... in front of all those kids! She went on and on screaming at him and threatening him and then she actually tried to climb the high chain link fence between the bleachers and the field so she could get at him! And the whole time, her little boy was standing there in tears saying, "Mama, I was out!" Someone called the police and they had to actually pry her off the fence like a deranged monkey!

Another time we actually had the father of a visiting player take a swing at one of our high school basketball players! When the father of our player saw this guy take a swing at his kid, he got up and started to slowly and purposely make his way towards the other guy, and everybody was just holding their breath ... our kids' dad was about 6'6" and at least 300 lbs. Nicest guy there ever was but you don't mess with his kids! Lucky for the visiting guy, the police got to him before Randall did! In fact, he was probably very thankful to be arrested!

 

[witzend]

I had a boss who bought a new house in a different school district so that her son had a better chance of making the defensive line on the Varsity Football team his Sophomore year.

 

[mrscatinthehat]

That has been a hard thing as a parent of an average athlete. My easy child goes out to have fun. Sure she would like to win but hey if it doesn't happen she usually takes it in stride. But she works her tail off at practice and has for every sport she goes out for. She got an MVP award in middle school for it. She earned a pizza party for her softball team because of it.

I have always tried to be extremely careful sitting in the bleachers. I yell for her and her team and so spirit but I don't do the grumpy parent thing at the events. Here if you do not only will you be ejected from the event your child doesn't get to participate. We both have to sign a code of conduct. And I have seen officials boot people in a heartbeat here.

 

[susiestar]

When my nephew turned 8 his wrestling coach started getting on the kids about weight classes. The coach was brother in law's best friend. husband's sister pulled nephew out and registered him as an independent. He could still train with his team, but sister in law picked the tournaments and weight classes he would compete in.

Why did she take such drastic steps, steps that almost resulted in a divorce because brother in law thought that she was being "mean" to his BFF?

She caught nephew spitting into a cup because he didn't want to gain weight by swallowing his own spit!!!!

Several of the boys who competed all those years and were far more serious about competing got full rides to college on wrestling scholarships. They also got some serious eating disorders.

Nephew got the message when sister in law pulled him out and made him compete in whatever weight class he was in, with-o the dieting. Apparently sudden short term diets can actually damage your heart.

The coach's son was one who ended up in treatment for bulimia.

 

[Marguerite]

It's not just sports where this sort of parent behaviour can be found - we had our girls (and difficult child 1 for a while) in a local dance school. One of the parents there was positively feral - she would sabotage other girls in the dance school in order to make her daughter look better. They were wealthy so they could afford to trow money at their daughter. The girl got private dance lessons (as well as extra tuition from outside the dance school with anoter dancer), she got sent to every summer dance camp they could get her into. Now all that is OK, but then they fed the girl some fairly mean propaganda and encouraged her to be mean and demoralise the other kids. easy child was a good dancer and copped some of this (except she is fairly resilient and simply brushed it off as this girl being mean) but the girl who copped it worst was the best dancer of them all by far, a natural talent. But with poor parents. easy child left this dance school but I was very close to this girl's mother (the brilliant dancer's, I mean) and I heard it all. There would be a dance exam coming up and the girls were supposed to all get tapes of the music so they could practice at home. But the rich girl's parents would get the tape first well in advance of the others, and then not make copies and share it around for several weeks. Often the good dancer girl would get the tape with only a few days to spare. PLus the rich girl was constantly putting her down, telling her off for "showing off" when all she was doing was dancing well (they used to do that to my girls too, with the result that the entire dance school deteriorated in standard, a sense of self-consciousness crept into their movements, it looked awful).

The mother of the rich girl made herself indispensible to te dance school teacher who then played favourites and would put the rich girl in the best position in the line-up, would give her the best parts in concerts etc. When the good dancer got better marks in exams (because the examiner was not connected to the dance school) then the rich giurl sulked and made the poor girl's life even more a misery.

I urged my friend to take her daughter out of that dance school and send her elsewhere, but the girl didn't want to; on the one hand her confidence had been shaken and she feared the unkown of a new dance school (would it be even tougher on her?) and on the other hand, she was under the spell of the rich girl was was condescending to be her 'friend' (can you pronounce Stockholm Syndrome?).

I'm describing them as rich girl, poor girl, but this had nothing to do with money (other than the rich girl's parents being able to afford the money they threw at their daughter's tuition). The rich girl did become a competent dancer, although somewhat mechanical. And sadly, the poor girl did lose some of her magic lustre as a dancer for quite a few years. Even more sadly, the poor girl (now a young adult) has been in an abusive relationship for a few years much to her mother's distress. But I see the seeds of this in the dance school experience; by not dealing with it and allowing her daughter to remain in that abusive environment, they were teaching her that she has to accept being treated in this way. I am so sad for them because they are lovely people, this girl is such a loving, gentle soul.

I used to work with the rich girl's father, I know where the ambitious drive was coming from. It wasn't just the mother. I've lost touch a bit with the rich family, but last time I saw the girl she was as ruthlessly ambitious as ever and still going places partly through her own determination (which is good) but also through tearing down anybody who she considered a rival in any way. Not good. Definitely someone I'm glad I was able to extricate easy child from being around.

Marg

 

[lizanne2]

Oh my, i could go on. My difficult children are pretty good athletes and WOW----- it is a trip. Son's basebaLL lost in State tournament this summer..... Coaches thrown out, parents thrown out, my kid versus your kid etc....... Enough already. My daughter is good at a not so popular sport and does better than most--state qualifying and people don't believe it when they tell them---they actually argue with her.......


But I must say---difficult child auditioned for musical at reg ed school......Got a lead role...parents call principal saying he shouldn't be able to audtion because he wasn't in that school. Whatever! And then they were all asking things like---who is his voice teacher? does he have an agent? Did he make state chorus? yada yada yada...

This stuff throws me. I am never sure how to react!

 

[AnnieO]

You're right, it isn't just the rich kids.

Our head coach's son is on Jett's team. So you'd expect special treatment, right? Ha ha, not. It's also not the opposite. CK gets treated the same way Jett, and Bill and Tom, and Harry and David, (yeah I'm using those 'cause our team has a lot of unusuals) - all get treated. They don't pay attention? They run a lap. They work their behinds off and don't quite get it? They get a high five.

We have an awesome coach.

One of the parents started dancing like a monkey and making fun of his son - at practice - when the child didn't catch a pass during drills. Fortunately his wife is a little more level headed and gave him what for. Quietly. I wouldn't have known except I was sitting right behind them!

And then there is batcave - last year she had the kids the weekend we played their old team. So she dressed Jett in a t-shirt with that team's name, his old number etc. on it under his jersey & pads. I was horrified. His team started to give him **** at the end of the game and, loud as could be, he says... "I'm only wearing it cause it's the only shirt I don't mind ruining!" And promptly ripped out the neck. I'm sure he caught it from batcave when he got home.

 

[DammitJanet]

Hanging my head in shame....I was a sports mom.

I stripped Jamie down to his undies in first grade when the ump called him out at the plate for throwing his bat in T-ball. It was totally unfair. Jamie was a tall kid but it was his first game, first year playing and he was barely 6 years old. His bat slipped out of his hand when he hit the ball and it went about 6 feet out in the field. Ump called him out. Then this other kid who had played the year before goes up and does the exact same thing but his bat goes even farther out but he was smaller than Jamie DOESNT get called out and the ump said...well he is littler so we have to make considerations...OH HECK NO!

That just didnt play with me. I started yelling at the ump...he started yelling back. We got into it right there and then like it was some big league game and I stripped Jamie of his T-ball uniform and took my boy home...lmao. News of what I had done reached my house before I even got home and we didnt have a telephone...lol.

Then there were all the times I stood on the sidelines of the football games or basketball games and yelled at the umps or refs that they needed glasses...lol.

 

[BusynMember]

My hub was a coach for my daughter's and son's soccer and softball teams. The parents were nuts. He is a really nice, mellow guy and handled them well. It was me, sitting in the stands listening to them whine, who wanted to jump out at them . Some are truly crazy. One man told my hub that if his daughter didn't pitch well, he'd be really mad at her and they'd be practicing overtime.
Hub just nodded. What can you say?
I think the boys are even worse. I had experience with that too with my sons. One of my sons dropped out of Little League due to the silly pressure and the other one decided to play park district sports, even though he was a great athlete, because he couldn't stand the BS of organized sports.
by the way, my goofball sister forced her daughter to become a Pommie and I think Pommie Mommies are sicker than athletic brutes...well, it's a close tie. They compete too, and the cattiness is off the charts with these mothers. You'd think THEY were on stage performing.

 

[BusynMember]

OH, MARG!!! DANCE SCHOOL!!!!

Goofy sister also has Pommie girl in dance school. When I was still speaking to her, she was ALWAYS whining about how this wasn't fair and that wasn't fair and how the "favorites" got all the good parts (it was probably true), blah, blah, blah. Half the dancers are anorexic, as is my sister. She tried to get her slightly plump, but hardly overweight daughter to lose weight so she would dance better and get better parts. I was appalled!!! She's not the only dancer/Pom mom who acts like that either.
I once read that 90% of dancers after high school have eating disorders. I don't know if it's true, but, if it is, I don't wonder why.

 

[susiestar]

It truly is scary to a lot of the kids to hear mom and dad yell and scream some of the things they do at games. Then the kids are supposed to "know" how to act in public??? After seeing some of the other players' parents at a few games I got a clear indication of why the kids were mean.

I was usually the one to go hand a bottle to a wound up parent and tell them to chill out. A few times I would go near the person screaming mean things and tell them off. If they DARED yell at MY KID? O. M. G.!!!! husband actually held on to me at one game. A guy called Jessie a slacker and a waste of field time. She had kicked the ball away from his kid (they were on opposite teams) three times and then his daughter kicked her knee. She went down on the field and missed the rest of the game. This guy was mad at Jess because his daughter got tossed out of the game for kicking her. I HEARD this man yell good job to his child when she kicked Jess. Jess didn't have the ball at all.

THEN I heard a mom say she wished the coach would stop telling them to take fouls if they can keep a strong playerr from playing. He gave the vicious kids more field time if they got tossed out for hurting someone! Not only did the coach get thrown out, the team had to forfeit all of their games that season. I was the B.witch of the soccer assn because I spoke out to the council about what he did. The coach was ON the council and when I said I was going to the news with this (and I know several reporters because I went to school with them) then they kicked him and his team out.

The kids were at fault, but most of the blame was on the adults. Parents knew he told them to hurt people and none of them squawked about it.

 

[svengandhi]

When oldest son was in K, he played baseball. He was a space cadet and used to gaze up at the clouds. Once, he actually lay down in the outfield to admire the cloud formations. There was a dad on the team who took this **** seriously. One day, he was acting as the batting coach. I overheard him tell my son as he waited to bat that he "would never make it in life if he didn't learn to pay attention and hit the ball!" I was 9 months pregnant at the time but I ran over to him and started yelling at him. I can't remember all that I said (son is now 19) but it ended with my threatening to call CPS if I ever heard him yell at his own kid again and to call the cops if he ever went near my son again.

Then, one of my other sons played soccer. Once, on the way to a game, it began to pour. We were close by and went but I figured the game would be canceled because baseball always is. The game wasn't. The poor goalie slipped face first into the mud. He took a few seconds to pick himself up and when he did, it was obvious he was crying. His father yelled out at the top of his lungs - "Stop whining and take it like a man. Get back out there and keep playing" These kids were in 3rd grade! My son never went back for another game after that.

My second son quit baseball in K after being told to "drop and give me 20" by the coach. He's going into grade 10 and has never done another organized sport. He is however on the chess and robotics teams. As he put it, he exercises a different part of his body.