Parents, relieve yourself of the burden of coaching from the stands. How to support your child during their sports journey?

Coach Connor, given your distinctive background as a former college coach, your current role as an athletic director, and your experience as a father of two, what was the pivotal moment that made you recognize you might be constraining your child's athletic development?  I think when I stopped thinking about how I felt and trying to just observe and see how he felt. We can talk to our kids but they will tell us what they think we want to hear or we guide them on what to say.  Things like “your coach should have put you in there you could have done this or that, what do you think?” of course they will agree with you.  I observed my son while playing in a high school game and I was thinking he should be in there, he can this better than that kid playing. Then I observed my son celebrating good plays on the bench with his teammates and realized there is so much more to this than playing time.  He loved what he was doing and being with his friends and teammates. I needed to let him enjoy his journey and not impose myself on that journey.

What do you consider to be the most significant challenge that parents face when it comes to the process of letting go? We all want the absolute best for our kids it is only natural. It is very difficult to see them fail yet that is what they need to do in order to succeed and understand how to handle success and failure as they will experience both. We cannot prevent failure we can only guide them on how to learn from it and get back up and move forward.

How might, parents unintentionally undermine their child's sports experience in various ways? By being too involved. Let them experience their journey it is not yours and you need to guide them and let them experience all there is to experience. Everything that parent is doing is out of love but we can up end hurting our kids in the long run.

As a former college coach, what were the most significant warning signs you observed from parents? Behavior in the stands, I have seen coaches walk out when observing parents’ behavior.  It is sad to see when a parent does not know how to act it can hurt their kid.  If a kid is top 10% maybe it doesn’t affect them, but for the other 90% it does affect them, and coaches do not want those headaches.  Everyone does not get to play a lot of minutes it is tough.  Parents are not at practices and workouts and their kid is not telling them everything and they get one side of the story that does not reflect the entire truth.

How has the existing youth sports framework significantly intensified the pressure experienced by parents? I think the worst thing is specializing and playing year-round. As a parent you feel like if they don’t play club and all of that year-round, they won’t be able to keep up and that is burning many kids out.  It is so competitive on games rather than practicing and getting better. Basketball you take 5 shots in a game, and you should be shooting 500 shots a day to be good.  Baseball how many swings do you get in a game how does this make you better.  People need to practice more than they play games. 

What are some strategies parents can implement to establish healthy boundaries for both their child and themselves throughout the child's development? Work with your child to make them better have them practice be positive but push them to do things right and compete. Then let them experience the ups and downs.  Don’t be negative about the coach or the refs or other kids. Help them with what they need to work on and realize sometimes other are just better you just keep working find your role and be the best at it. 

How did your relationship with your child evolve after you made the decision to release control? My son worked hard, maybe the hardest off season and in season worker on his teams. He was not the most talented, but he was the smartest and earned respect because of his work ethic. I watched and enjoyed seeing his development as a person not just a player. He played his freshman and senior years in high school.  His college days he did not play much but he was a leader, and he kept his teammates involved and engaged.  He ran scout teams, he promoted a team culture that was as good as I have seen, he experienced success on his teams, and he was a major part of that because of what he did for the team culture. I watched and enjoyed the games much more when I could set my thoughts and feelings aside and allowed him to enjoy the game.  Rather than bashing a coach or ref or a teammate for his not playing and we could just talk about the game.   Everyone has a role know what yours is and excel at that role.  Not everyone is the best player or plays the most minutes the best teams are player lead but you need a special group of kids and parents to be able to enjoy that success.