Managing Parents Archives:

The True Story of Injury Risk in Youth Football Some people, mostly the proverbial “soccer moms”  have a fear their children will be hurt if they play youth football. Even Lombardi/Outland winner Ndomukong Suh’s mother wouldn’t allow him to play football until he got into the 8th grade, she required him to play soccer. Mr [...]

 Daddy favoritism is one of the most common and deadly team killers in youth football. Almost all of us have seen it, the average player who is put into a no-win situation by a well meaning but selfish or delusional father. The average baseball player who would make a pretty good outfielder is made the [...]

Reacting to Blown Calls When Coaching Youth Football On June 3rd Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Gallarraga was one out from throwing a perfect game when a ground ball hit by Jason Donald went for a single on the 27th out. The problem was Donald was mistakenly called safe at first base by umpire Jim Joyce, replays showed [...]

What to Say to the Local High School Coach, Pressuring You to Run His System? I love going to places where football is important. The Bay Area has good football and there are plenty of good youth football coaches I’ve met over the years from that area. My wife and I had the good fortune [...]

Parent Problems in Youth Football  I’m seeing a flood of posts on youth football forums and even getting a few e-mails from youth football coaches complaining about “player agents” also known as parents. Most of these unhappy coaches are dealing with parents that have non-issues, have an agenda, are misinformed, don’t know much about the [...]

  Youth Football Parents Say the Darndest Things Sometimes youth football parents say the darndest and in some cases the most revealing things. We pay to have all of our games filmed by a professional videographer. We do a year end video for each player, we add interesting and amusing text comments and set the entire [...]

Getting parents “On Board” is key when you are coaching youth football and want to keep your sanity. Some Parents Don’t “Get” Youth Football Many parents just don’t understand what is acceptable and unacceptable fan behavior. Remember your program will always be judged by the aggregated actions of your coaches, players AND parents. If you [...]

Coaches it’s your job as a youth football coach to head these kind of people off at the pass. Aggressive intervention at the first sign of trouble usually sends these Jerry Springer types packing. My teams, even the ghetto teams I coached right accross the streets from the housing projects have never had anything remotely [...]

Youth Coach Pulls Gun On Ref At Football Game Coaches- This is not as odd an incident as many of us would like to believe. My guess is this was not the first time this person acted out at a youth football game. Once you allow a person to act out, they get more and [...]

Defusing Problem Parents in Youth Football There are a number of strategies a youth football coach can use to avoid parental hassles in youth football. As mentioned in previous posts, the most powerful weapon in this battle is the parent contract and the mandatory parent meeting held just prior to the first practice. During that [...]