Quote:
Originally Posted by flabucki09
I can only offer this advice for parents with kids that excel at their chosen sport. As a top level youth coach for the better part of my adult life the best thing for parents to do is look for teams that have NON-PARENT coaches as your child ages up and becomes competitive. It could mean traveling a bit for practices and paying for training - but it will alleviate the craziness associated with youth sports.
There are just as many crazy non parent coaches as there are parent coaches. We made this change my kids 14u season and it was a disaster. We hired a couple of former college players and they were awful. Didn’t know the game, were extremely unorganized, and did not know how to coach. Looking back, the very best coaches were dads. They had skin in the game and it meant more to them. There were certainly crazy dads out there and many that were in it for their own kid. We played against Dayton Moore’s (Royals GM) team a few times. He had a kid on the team but he treated every kid the same and they were so well coached. Obviously, that is an extreme example but the teams that I respected the most usually had a dad coaching.