Which youth sport has the worst parents?

[allenmurray]

The bulk of the season, which started during the school year and went through maybe the 4th of July, was a league with a draft and dads coaching and even the worst players got to play and all of that. So there was plenty of incentive to coach up the "weaker" players, as competence throughout the lineup was critical to actually winning games, unless you happened to have one of the 2-3 players who were dominant pitchers on your squad. I don't have kids old enough yet to know, but I suspect this basic premise hasn't changed, however, even though in today's world the talented are siphoned off earlier.

Quite true. The first year I was coaching on my own in LL an experienced coach gave me some great advice. "Pay a lot of attention to your weaker players. Everybody has a few studs, and they will be fine. But the team which has weak players who get progressively better over the course of the season will win the championship."

[allenmurray]

You're quite correct that there is a fear factor relating to baseball. But, while I'm certain there's an emotional fear of failure for some kids, overcoming the physical fear related to the fact that getting hit in the face with a baseball really freaking hurts is a faaaaaar bigger detriment to advancement for more players. Even at age 12, a lot of kids shy away from the ball, step in the bucket, retreat instead of charge, catch the ball away from their bodies. Why? They don't want to get hit, plain and simple.

Sometimes getting hit by a pitch can be a good thing - my younger son was really afraid of getting hit by a pitch and it greatly impacted his batting. After he was actually hit the first time he said, "That really didn't hurt as much as I thought it would". Fear gone, he became a much better batter. I've also seen a kid I coached, who was a great 11 year old player, get hit by a bad hop that came up as he was fielding (using proper technique - just a freak bounce). It broke his nose. He was never the same as a ball player.

Psychological fear? My older son could throw 75 mph (timed on a radar gun) at 12 years old, with incredible accuracy - but only with no one in the batter's box. Put a batter in the box and it cost him 15 mph. He could simply never get past the fear of hitting a batter.

[rasputin]

Sometimes getting hit by a pitch can be a good thing - my younger son was really afraid of getting hit by a pitch and it greatly impacted his batting. After he was actually hit the first time he said, "That really didn't hurt as much as I thought it would". Fear gone, he became a much better batter. I've also seen a kid I coached, who was a great 11 year old player, get hit by a bad hop that came up as he was fielding (using proper technique - just a freak bounce). It broke his nose. He was never the same as a ball player.

Psychological fear? My older son could throw 75 mph (timed on a radar gun) at 12 years old, with incredible accuracy - but only with no one in the batter's box. Put a batter in the box and it cost him 15 mph. He could simply never get past the fear of hitting a batter.

I helped coach a LL team a long time ago, and had been working with a kid who was fearful of both pitched balls (while hitting) and hit balls (while fielding). The same thing happened--he was hit by a batted ball, and was visibly surprised that it was less painful than he'd feared. I encouraged him to try to transfer that feeling to hitting, and he eventually got over his fear of the pitched ball too.

[-bdbd]

I voted for hockey b/c that is where I've seen the most stories in the news of parents getting violent, with coaches and refs. There was a video on the web last year of a parent just pummeling his kid's coach for, apparently, not playing his kid enough. Coach wound up unconscious and in an ambulance.

I grew up playing all sports, but baseball was really my calling, where I pretty much made all of the All-Star teams as a kid, mostly for being a strong batting average hitter and a good-fielding 1B/3B. I do remember some abusive parents, usually from opposing (city) teams, but it was pretty rare in the 60's and 70's, helped by the fact that I played in several military "base leagues" (as a Navy brat) -- and that is not an environment that tollerates rowdiness from the stands...

Alas, I have two little girls now, and neither has a strong affinity for baseball/softball - just 2 seasons each before moving on. In addition to coaching them in baseball, and one year of lacrosse, I've also coached about 12 seasons (2 per year) of youth soccer, and two of BB. I would qualify something that Billy Dat said, that it isn't just the competitive dads/coaches who can make leagues unbalanced. Though I did see that first-hand with a soccer team of new players entering a league where (most of the other teams) stayed together for 2-3 seasons, and in the first game of the season, after we'd had only one practice (two others had been rained out), the other team (which had played together for 2 seasons) came in with numerous set plays, code-word maneuvers, mix-match formations, etc... and the score was 0-5 by halftime. The coach was nice enough to explain to me afterward how things had worked, where he was able to cherry-pick the better new players entering the league as "replacements" to his (lesser) players who'd not returned. I joked with my wife that the best six players on the field were all on the other team. FWIW I did develop strategies to be able to compete with these teams with which we were overmatched, lest our kids get totally discouraged, but I find myself deciding between playing "fun" strategies (think offensive) versus "winning startegies" (pack in the defense and play for breakways/counters).

But the point that I wanted to make with Billy dat was that, at the early ages, especially with sports involving smaller teams, it is often just one dominant, aggressive player who dictates wins/losses. My 10-year-old daughter played on a girls BB team this past Winter. Her team came in 2nd out of 16. Pretty good, and they played well-coached team ball. But the only team to beat them all season, which also beat them in the championship game, was dominated by one very aggressive, physical and coordinated girl - whose dad was the coach. In the championship game they beat our team 34-20. The coach's daughter scored 28 of their 34 points, and created the majority of our turnovers too. Not sure, if my kid was on their team, whether I'd have been happy or not - the coach made little pretext of involving any other players beyond setting picks for his daughter or feeding her passes in the lane (on the rare occasion she wasn't dribbling the ball). And I've had similar "dominant player" experiences in girls' youth soccer too.

Fortunately I've generally seen pretty cooperative, supportive parents as a coach. It has helped that I try religiously to make sure there's a good balance of playing time for all the kids - though I'll admit that, to stay competitive, coaching can often become a drill in "how do I hide the poor player." (Obviously you never give any indication to the kid about that - I'm very upbeat with all of the girls.) One exception: I did coach a group of 7-year-old girls a year ago where we had a very strong team (2 really dominant players, undefeated 10-game season) - and I've never seen this before or since - where we were winning the last game of the season, 1-0, coming out of a time-out, and I saw one father on the far side (looked like a former athlete, maybe FB lineman) talking to his fairly large daughter in a very demonstrative way, and tho I couldn't hear him he clearly showed her how to throw an elbow. She'd been pretty physical already, but, sure enough, not a minute later one of my good players stole the ball from her, passed the ball upfield, and as the players and young ref turned to follow the play this opposing 7-year-old threw an elbow right into the back of my much smaller player and knocked her to the ground, crying... It happened very clearly 5 feet in front of me, and the downed little girl's father went ballistic behind me, screaming at the 14-year old ref to "get control of the game, or else!" I had to play peacemaker, but honestly understood the anger of a dad who just saw his kid meanly knocked to the ground from behind by a much larger kid, well away from the ball. Fortunately the opposing coach saw what happened and took the overly aggressive girl out of the game, explaining to me afterwards that the father was providing lots of "unwelcomed personal coaching" to the aggressive daughter. As a footnote, my assistant coach later told me that he saw that dad high-five his daughter as she trotted back to the sideline. But we won, 2-0, and our injured player was ok (though unable to play the last 1/4 of the game).

Lastly, our youngest, 8-year-old, has just started travel soccer. From what I've seen so far it is very political and overly competitive, with parents sending angry emails to the league about which coaches to hire, etc. The selection process for the three travel teams was very political too. We'll see. I just don't recall this travel team intensity from when I was a kid, with year-round play/practicing/coaching, even for 8-year-olds... Stay tuned.

[blazindw]

I've played almost all of the above sports throughout the years, and there are no worse parents than in football, particularly in football states like Texas and Florida (and even Michigan where I grew up). In Michigan, basketball is king and there are terrible parents (and politics) when it comes to that, but EVERYONE thinks their son is the next Barry Sanders or Calvin Johnson. I've seen a lot of on-field fights started by parents rushing their sons on the sidelines.

And don't get me started on football in Texas...I love the sport, but the parents there are ruthless.