Yesterday I attended a parents' meeting for one of Daisy's extracurricular sports.
The meeting was called because the guy in charge of the sport (and I'm being deliberately vague here) was fed up with poor parent behavior. The administrator called for a sport-wide meeting and gathered hundreds of us parents in a gym this weekend.
For 30 minutes the man lectured and berated us, enumerating all the different ways that parents had been misbehaving the last few years. He explained that many parents try to coach their kids during the games, others bring their own whistles from home to do some sideline officiating, some parents yell at each other, and every once in a while a fight breaks out.
The lecturer explained how he never had to expell a child from the sport, but he had had to get a few restraining orders for parents. He marched back and forth across the gym floor explaining how it was important for us to try and identify the berserk parents on our team. He suggested that we all should have a team meeting, so that early on we could figure out who the bipolar psychopaths were.
Truth be told, the guy had a pretty funny presentation style, but I walked out of the meeting a little stunned. I tried to think if any of the parents on our team might be violent freaks, but I couldn't identify any. Afterwards I went to an event for Daisy's school and I recovered from the meeting by telling some people all about the lecture, and what a personality the guy had.
"Oh, I know him," one parent confided to me, "There's a restraining order against him and he's not allowed within 50 feet of our school. Apparently he hit a kid."
I guess it takes one to know one.
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5 comments:
so what will you do if he hit daisy?
We have a couple of hothead coaches in town, but so far they haven't been physical. Most parents are willing to put up with them, as long as they maintain their right to bitch and complain about them while never leaving their sideline chairs to actually coach a team themselves.
Patsy, the guy is just the league administrator, so he doesn't do any of the coaching, or on-field stuff. I'd never seen him before.
Carey, that sounds like a reasonable compromise.
Zelda I hated sports, and when my children played, man oh man did I hate those parents who yelled and screamed at not only their child but children on their child's team and children on the other team as well. I was so happy when my son was no longer able to play because of bad knees, not that he had bad knees, but that he didn't have that pressure and I didn't have to go to games and witness such rude behavior. Good thing there is a restraining order on him, at least he won't be at the school. What are the requirements to be a coach? Can you get a degree in PE. Sports people, some anyway, are like those bully cops, yeah, they are over zealous for the fight.
Zelda, I have no idea what the requirements to being a coach are, but this guy isn't a coach, he just runs the league and lectures the parents. And, yes, one can get a degree in P.E.
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