In Wisconsin, a high school girl's basketball coach has announced that he will quit his job at the end of the season. He had guided his team to two state championships, but parents complained that he made some players cry.
In Virginia, another basketball coach is starting over at a different school. Shortly after she coached her girls team to the state championship she was relieved of her duties because players-and their parents-complained she was "verbally abusive." According to one player, " a sport… should be fun and coaches shouldn't interfere and make life miserable."
With increasing frequency, it seems, the players-and their parents-want to run the locker room.
A recent article in USA Today cited 11 causes in the past seven months in which high school or college coaches faced open rebellion from their players. The list is not comprehensive. Not included, for instance, is last month's player/parent dissatisfaction at Northmont High School that lead to the mid-season resignation of the boy's basketball coach.
Along with verbal abuse and making them cry, the coaches in the USA Today story are accused of "favoritism" "poor relations with players" and "poor communication with players and parents."
In my career as a sports parent, four of my kids were on high school athletic teams. I'm not sure how many of their coaches played favorites. I can't say whether or not they had poor relationships with their players. My communication with their coaches was pretty much limited to finding out approximately what time they thought practice might end, if ever.
Which doesn't mean I wasn't interested in my kids.
I went to every one of their games. I sat in rainstorms and watched them roll around on muddy football fields. I stood at the edge of lumpy soccer fields and watched them kick each other in the shins. I drove through hail to find basketball courts that had no heat and no ZIP code.
Just about the only place I never went was into a coach's office to fight my kids' battles for them.
Not because I didn't care about my kids. But because I did.
My feeling was that there comes a time when parents have to let their kids learn about life. And high school sports is a great time to start. High school sports does a lot more than teach kids how to pass, punt and dribble. It has a lot of other valuable lessons.
It teaches them that not all coaches are fair. Which might ease the shock when they find out that not all bosses are fair.
It teaches them that coaches don't always have the time, or the inclination, to worry about whether something they say might bruise a player's feelings. Which might prepare them for a world that does not always have the time, or the inclination, to worry about their feelings.
It teaches them that, no matter how wonderful mommy and daddy have told them they are, there are plenty of other kids just as wonderful. Which might make it easier for their egos to handle the blow on the inevitable day they discover that mommy and daddy were wrong and they are not the center of the universe, after all.
Some parents feel high school is too early for their kids to learn lessons like those.
I think it's almost too late.