May 15

May 15 UPDATE

Coach and Parent (or Coach/Parent) Relationships

Over the last several weeks, with little else to do besides scrolling through endless social media feeds, a common theme I found cropping up in the Long Term Development "Twitterverse" (which is much nicer and collaborative than "Baseball Twitter") was the importance of the coach-parent-player relationship (or the coach/parent-player relationship when you're coaching your kids). To preface this, and to acknowledge my own biases, I don't have kids and I've never been in the position of having to parent a kid in youth sports. But my personal experiences have shown me the importance of having parents as allies in the pursuit of the greater holistic goals that we use baseball to achieve: namely, creating good people. I wanted to share a couple of the resources that pushed me down this rabbit hole:

Coach Mongero - Pitfalls to avoid when coaching your child - @CoachMongero (Twitter)

Here, Coach Mongero is speaking from the heart, having played and coached at an exceptionally high level, with and without his son. I have found this resource to be helpful with any parent, regardless if they coach their kid or not. Useful principles such as, "[don't] allow their whole identity to become solely about baseball. It's what they do, not who they are" or "[set] rules for when you can talk about games" or "[expose] your child to high level baseball minds (directly or indirectly) as much as possible". These are incredibly important nuggets that, if used correctly and at the right time, can dramatically improve the relationship you have with your child.

For example, from my own experience, I was the coach's kid while playing hockey growing up. I spent a season commuting to and from Vegreville and, as the only goaltender for my team, the pressure was entirely on me for how well or poorly my team did. I was fortunate that those 45 minute drives after games and practices were not lectures on what I could have done better or need to do to fix my game. Instead I was able to open up at my own pace and discuss the game in any capacity that I desired to. Being given the agency to succeed and fail on my own is a foundational component to my adolescence and a significant contributing factor into how I am in adulthood.

I have also seen this go in the opposite direction. I've had several teams play in showcase tournaments where there are scouts in the stands or college coaches roaming around looking for recruits. These weekends were often tenuous and we often never played to the level that we knew we were capable of. This started from the outset as you could see some players were travel-worn and weary from the three hour lecture they received from their parent on the way to the tournament. You could see the weight on their shoulders and the anxieties swimming around in their heads: being drafted, scholarships, going to college, making the Junior National team, etc. All these thoughts were playing out, almost violently, in the brains of my players; that this tournament was the beat-all-end-all and definitive make-or-break point of their baseball careers (which I can assure you, it wasn't). After losses or poor performances, you can be assured these lectures continued to and from the hotel, to and from dinner, and certainly on the three hour ride back home.

I use these examples as a way to frame positive interactions with your parents and athletes. Coaches should encourage parents to be involved primarily as cheerleaders on and off the field. They need to be the #1 supporters for their kids and the others on the team. Encourage parents and players to set ground rules for what they talk about after practice or after games, even if you have to provide them with suggestions (such as the standard 24-hour cooling off window or only discussing things, without judgement, that they player brings up themselves). Sit down and converse in a player-coach-parent meeting to establish what the player wants from baseball and what their goals are. There's any number of ways we can facilitate this. To use Coach Mongero's words, "[prepare] the child for their path...not prepare the path for your child". Following these principles can make baseball a better place for coaches, for parents, and (most importantly) the kids - the ones who are actually playing the game.

Yours in baseball,

Coach Lovie
Baseball Development Lead
Sherwood Park Minor Baseball Association
baseballdevelopment@spmba.ca