Soccer Parents

Today I want to talk about Soccer parents or any sport parents. My son plays for a traveling team outside of our district. When we first came here, we wasn't too impressed with the quality of his district team. We meet some nice people who introduced us to the coach from another district. He was real nice and gave my son a try out. That was six years ago and he has been playing for them every since.

They were a very good team and won a lot more games then they lost. They even won the Edinboro Tournament twice out of the three times they went. At the end of the indoor season, they played a very awsome last game. We could not wait to start the Spring outdoor season. We were already talking about Edinboro. Little did we know that things would quickly fall apart.

It turns out that four of the parents were unhappy with our coach. They felt that their kids did not get enough playing time. They anti-coach faction ended up taking over the Soccer Assoc. We orignally started the season with two teams, however, the anti-coach team did not have enough players. So, what they did was to disband the pro-coach team and put the extra kids into the anti-coach team. Now our good coach has no team to coach. They told his assistant that if he "didn't like it, he could take his ball and go home." Needless to say, he went home.

Four of the best players on the team quite and ended up playing up an age group. That left us with a team that is challanged when it comes to winning. We haven't won a game since. Instead of a winning team, we now have a feel good team, where all the players are equal and feel good about themselves. Well, that really sucks. Life is not equal and when you get to be 14 years old, it is time you find that out. Everyone is good at something. You just have to find out what it is. The kids understand that there is a pecking order, the parents just can't accept it.

If you had all the kids on the field and threw them a ball, they would play and have a good time. Add into the dish, parents and you have a mess. So, that is what we now have. A great team desroyed by parents who can't accept that another kids might get just a little more playing time then theirs. I would rather be a back up player on the Boston Red Soxs when they won the series, then a starting player for the Pirates. Same with our soccer team. I'm sure that the kids now losing every game would rather play a little less and win a few more games.