Camillus NY - Hot on the heels of cross country, Winter Track is back. After the success of Jim Vermeulen's XC Journal in the fall, we've asked again for him to provide some news and notes once a month this winter. Think of these as the thoughts that cross the mind of your average coach. Up from Section 3, we present you with "Thoughts From Three."
Local Columnists weigh in
Ray Gallagher (Section 1) - Click Here
Phil Blackwell (Section 3) - Click Here
Jeff DiVeronica (Section 5) - Click Here
In early spring, our AD e-mailed all coaches with a request born of recent incidents. This fall and winter, parents had on several occasions loudly and publically criticized coaches or the athletic department concerning their scholastic athletes. Never mind that the district already has an Athletic Handbook dealing with proper coach-parent interactions that both parents and athletes sign off on each season. Never mind that most coaches codify their team rules and regulations in packets for the athletes at pre-season meetings and for moms and dads at Parent Meetings. It wasn't enough to maintain the defensive perimeters. The district's lawyers were summoned, and they recommended another, more fortified, parapet. So each sport will soon have a Team Informational Handbook outlining all rules and procedures specific to that team. All i's doted. All t's crossed. A rule for everything and everything with a rule. "Girls Outdoor Track is a no-cut sport," mine will begin by way of reminder.
All coaches, regardless of sport, have their growing libraries of coach-parent war stories. And now that I will, in a sense, be "lawyered up" for my anticipated adversarial coaching role in the season's ahead, it's a good time to remember how we are simply practicing lowest-common-denominator politics again. Necessary perhaps, but sad. This is our 2% who insist on driving the bus, the loud, self-righteous, aggrieved, angry and typically ill-informed parents who so clearly do not represent anyone but themselves and all the delusions of grandeur that can come with raising a scholastic athlete. We waste so much time on these few, time that our athletes and our other parents deserve so much more. But waste it we must in a litigious, self-centered society.
"All athletes who attend required practices and give the required efforts are welcome members of our team," will be my second sentence. It seems so simple and harkens back to what, in years gone by, was a given for athletes. You show up, you do what you are told and you work hard at that. Some of the reward is immediate, wherein you appreciate the intrinsic value of hard work, which leads to remarks like "that workout kicked my butt coach, but it was crazy good." Those athletes go home with a sly smile of accomplishment on their faces. Some of the rewards lie further down the road, in warmer places where the gun goes off or the runway clears for a mentally and physically honed athlete about to reap the benefits of sacrifice.
Too often today, however, more and more team members can't seem to manage a single practice week clear of incessant appointments, activity conflicts, or vacations. And still, they expect rewards now or they want rewards for something not earned. Dire Straits once sang "Money for Nothing." It's a slightly outdated--but still apt--metaphor for those suffer-no-pain team members. And I hesitate to call them athletes because 70-80% attendance averages do not define true athletes.
The danger here, of course, lies in devoting too much time or mental energy to those parental/athlete exceptions to the rule. It's too easy to sour on all 'kids these days' or paint parents with a broad brush because of the few who truly are at odds with the practice and spirit of the sport. It's always a good idea for coaches to remind themselves that they have mostly great, hardworking kids, with maybe a few who haven't--or refuse to--figure it out. It pays to remember that the overwhelming majority of parents want to fulfill cooperative, supportive roles for their student-athletes. Both are true.
"Our primary expectation is that all athletes, despite their talent level, can--and will--achieve personal success and be important contributors to the team." That will be my third sentence. It should be where I could stop--no more necessary.
But instead, what will follow is a long litany of do's and don'ts, required attendance percentages and behavior practices about everything except how to lace your trainers and properly wipe your nose. I'll have rules to cover all the contingency-parents and all the questionable 'athletes.' I'll make the lawyers happy. Then, maybe, I'll add an apology for all those other team members and their parents, a mea culpa for the preponderance of rules, strict policies and heavy-handed statements about expected behavior that they don't need. They deserve as much. And after all that, I can get back to doing what I have always signed up for: coaching young athletes. I will, at least, be more fully prepared to deflect those annoying background noises to the team symphony I'm expected to conduct on a daily basis.
Coach Vermeulen