Schools

Op-Ed: Sometimes in Youth Sports, Adults Forget it's All About the Kids

One resident shares a nightmarish experience with a local sports team.

A Marin resident shared this true story. It's anonymous because the the identity of the author is not important to the message.

My youngest son loves a sport beyond belief. I’ll call that sport “shuffleboard.”

He is in his fifth year of playing shuffleboard. He plays shuffleboard whenever he can, including seemingly non-stop against the house, at practice, at matches, on the high school shuffleboard court with his dad, at recess and lunch at school, after school with his friends, and in the mornings when we take the dog to the field near a shuffleboard court.

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He watches shuffleboard matches with his dad, rooting for his dad’s favorite team. He subscribes to shuffleboard magazines. He knows the names of all the best professional shuffleboard players.

He wanted to play competitive shuffleboard last year, but we weren’t ready to take on that financial and time commitment of having him travel all over Northern California. We had also heard horror stories about the shuffling of parents off the shuffleboard court. But he is shuffleboard-mad, so we took the plunge this year, and he made the top team for his age group. He was the only player new to the world of competitive shuffleboard to make the A team.

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There have been many incidents in his time on the competitive shuffleboard team that have had my husband and me regretting the decision.

When I was fired as manager by the coach after I had done all the scut work of organizing kids’ birth certificates and forms and payments and photos and held an extremely contentious meeting between A team parents and B team parents.

Why was I fired? Because I went to the shuffleboard league to complain about how carry-over funds from two years prior were being distributed.

When we heard how the coach yelled at nine-year-olds when the team was losing, during matches, singling out players and screaming such good-sportsmanlike statements such as “Get the damned (shuffleboard thingy).”

When we saw no rhyme or reason to how much time some kids played and some did not, musing that perhaps it had more to do with the coach’s relationships with some of the parents.

When we heard how the coach yelled at referees when a call was missed or the coach disagreed with the call.

When I found myself sitting on the side of the shuffleboard court with the opposing team’s parents because I was embarrassed at how the coach sounded.

When he began substituting players every two to three minutes, often barely letting a player warm-up on the shuffleboard court before yanking him.

When we heard following a recent game that his 15-minute post-match “pep talk” included the use of obscenities and threats to move players down to the B team.

He called Sunday night and said he was moving my son down to the B team, to give him more playing time, he said. My husband spoke succinctly and brilliantly to him. I had listened in on the call. When I had had enough, I called the coach a couple of obscenities. I obviously get my good sportsmanship from the same place the coach does.

We have paid about $250 in registration fees, another $1,100 in team fees, another $235 for the uniform and shuffleboard equipment, and another $150 for our portion of tournament fees. We have paid plenty more in getting the kid to and from practices and games.

The first true game of the season was Saturday. Of the 13 players on the shuffleboard team, perhaps two played well. My son was not one of those two players.

There are no refunds. That’s the rule one agrees to when one signs a kid up for a competitive shuffleboard team.

That’s a hard-and-fast rule, apparently, unlike the rule that says a coach can only stay with the same team for two years. The coach of my son’s shuffleboard team is on his third year of coaching the same team.

Unlike the rule that says every family has to contribute at least six hours of volunteer time or the kid doesn’t play.

And unlike the rule that says the family who has the team shuffleboard equipment for game days is not able to sell it all on Craigslist when their kid gets kicked off the team …

What can we do to remind adults involved in youth sports that it's all about the kids? In some sports, the leagues make parents sign a contract of good conduct and coaches go through training in ethical and fair treatment of players. But occasionally that's not enough. Do you see a problem in this area in Ross Valley youth sports? How can it be fixed?


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