There is a time and a place

I was driving to Plainfield and back tonight to pick up my son and was thinking about a most unfortunate incident that I witnessed Saturday. My practice day was short, by design, so I could take in the HCC Conference Swimming and Diving Championships. There were a couple of divers competing that I have not seen in a while and needed to do a little scouting.

I like to people watch at events like this as well, you learn a lot about the competitors by how their families react to things. Whether they get excited about a dive or grimace tells those that are paying attention whether that dive was normal, unusually good, or unusually bad.

I was talking to one of the girls who train with me in the summer; she had been in a car accident the day before and was far too sore to try to compete in the meet. She has a high school teammate that is rather good, and should do well this year in the state tournament. Her teammate was not diving particularly well so I was watching both her and her parents. It was very troubling what I was seeing and of course there was nothing I could do about it.

This young lady gave up after a couple dives. She was obviously not doing things the way she wished she would and her body language told the story. When her head is in the game, she is one of the top divers in the state of Indiana and in this meet she was one of the top three competing. However, she let things she couldn’t control get the best of her and she shut down long before the meet was over.

I was talking to her coach at the conclusion of the event. I was very interested in what had transpired on the pool deck during the meet because I know both the coach and the diver very well. What I saw was not typical of either of them. He was telling me she simply stopped listening to what he was saying to her. She shut down after her second dive, which was exactly what I saw happen from the stands.

As he and I were talking about what he may be able to do in the future to help her, her parents walked by on their way out of the building. We both said congratulations ( this diver finished in the top 5) and my friend made an attempt at talking to the family as well. The father simply looked at us in disgust and said “Way to go coach, you really did it this time!” and continued out the door. The mother at least said thank you as she was trying to keep up with her husband.

Now here was a coach who I know does everything in his power to prepare his kids to do the absolute best they can. He genuinely cares about the athletes under his care and would do just about anything to help then in or out of the pool. Not that it matters, but he basically does it as a volunteer since the money they pay him to coach is only a couple of hundred dollars per season.

Here is an athlete that for whatever reason decided she wasn’t going to win the meet and shut down long before it was over. She began to simply go through the motions instead of focus on exactly what she knew how to do. While the parents should have been thanking this coach for the time he invests with their daughter, they instead blame him for her inability to do what she knows how to do and trains to do every day.

I know parents all believe their kids are the best at anything they do, it is our nature. We, as parents, also find it much easier to place the blame on someone other than our child when things don’t go the way we hope they will. Parents also need to realize that we, as coaches, want their child to succeed at least as much as they do. We can prepare them to do their best, but we do not go out on the playing field or walk down the board for them. They do that themselves.

As a coach, it is gut wrenching when I watch an athlete I have trained perform below what they are capable of. I do my best to put on a positive happy face; it doesn’t do anyone any good for me to show how disappointed I may be. We have to hide our feelings and deal with the athlete’s disappointment as best we can, in a constructive manner tell them we are proud of them even if we are not the least bit proud of their performance. There is a time and place to address the lack of execution or lack of concentration, but out in public in front of the world is not the time or place to do it.

For this parent, or any parent, to publicly show disrespect or disdain for the coach when it was their own child who failed to perform the way they know how is uncalled for.  It does nothing constructive and in the end only leads to hurt feelings and animosity.

Remember if you ever find yourself in this type of situation that you have faith in the coach or your child wouldn’t be participating with them. If you feel the coach really was the reason your child didn’t perform well, then maybe it is best to look elsewhere for your child’s coaching needs. At the very least, it is best to allow things to settle down a bit and ask for a meeting to discuss your concerns.