Dear Coach ...

Dear Coach,

I am the parent of the kid you keep “on the bench”.  He’s the quiet one, the one who works hard each and every practice, who gives you everything he’s got, and then goes home tired.  Never once have you heard him say “give me the ball!” or “I really, really want to play such and such a position”.  You also never hear him complain.  If he isn’t put into a game, he won’t say a word.  He’ll just stand there, on the sidelines, wondering what he did wrong, why you don’t like him, why he doesn’t get a chance to hit hard out there on the field like he does at every practice. 

For a while, he’ll try harder at the practices, hoping that it will get him noticed by you.  After the number of great, hard hitting practices rack up, and the number of plays in the actual games do not, he starts to lose hope.  He begins to become discouraged.  He comes home and says things like “I suck.  The coach hates me.   The team hates me.  I’m no good to anyone out there … and they don’t want me.”  He stops believing his parents who tell him he IS good, and the coach does NOT hate him, nor anybody on his team.  Eventually he stops wanting to play the game at all, since he comes away feeling discouraged and insecure.  And after a while, he quits trying so hard in the practices.  After all, it doesn’t make a bit of difference.

I’m the parent of that incredible kid.  I see in him the huge potential, the heart, and the strength of body and of spirit.  I entrusted him to you because I believed that you would help draw out of him that talent, that you would teach him what sportsmanship, teamwork and working hard at something means.  You coach the sport he wants to learn, yet you left him on the bench during the games.  Not just some of the time, ALL of the time.  You taught him that sometimes it does NOT pay to work hard and be a good sport.  You taught him that being on the team means you’d better be a coaches kid or you are not going to get to play … no matter how hard you work.  As the parent of that kid, I am heartbroken, disappointed … and angry.  I entrusted my incredible kid to you for a season, and now I need to undo all the things you taught him, because they were not the things I hoped he would learn.

This particular kid never wanted to be a ball handler.  He only wanted to knock people down.  He liked hitting hard, and he was good at it.  I cannot comprehend why you would not take advantage of that desire.  Teach him the techniques to do it better and more efficiently and then let him play.  One of the strongest kids on the team, one who never quit, sat on your bench during most of the games.

He wasn’t the only on, there were quite a few others.  Kids who don’t understand why they didn’t get to play and parents who have to try and explain it to them.  Parents who now do not know if their child will want to  come back next year and aren’t sure if they should press the issue when the result of this season was hurt and disappointment.

I’m the parent of the kid you kept on the bench.  You, the coach, are the parent of the kid you put IN the game.  How would you feel if the situation were reversed?

Angry?  Disappointed?  Frustrated?

Yeah.  That’s how we feel, too.