Hold Your Tongue: Parents’ Behavior Can Turn Off College Coaches

National Scouting Report, the most substantial on-the-ground scouting organization on the globe, tries to present college coaches with qualified student-athletes capable of thriving on the college level. Nowadays this also includes the athletes’ parents.

There’s more to recruiting than that.

There is also the question of whether the parents of those prospects are the type of people coaches want to deal with over a four-year period as well.

Generally speaking, most parents are not obstacles to the recruiting process. They are helpful and want the very best for their children. Others, however, are barriers — or needlessly create problems — to that process and can easily harm their children’s chances of being recruited.

A college coach once told me: “I love this kid you recommended. I would love to have ten more. But please don’t ever send any more parents like hers because they make my life a living hell.”

Since that day, I started to include parents in my evaluating process and have, at times, completely backed off prospects whom I believed could cause headaches for a college coach. Knowing I would be working with coaches long after the athletes left the school, I focused more attention on what parents might bring to the coaches’ tables. If they consistently exhibited poor behavior, I had no qualms about moving on to another prospect.

Types of Bad Sports Parents

Over the years, I eventually began to categorize the ones whom I knew from experience would be troublemakers. Here are some of the scary traits of parents I tried to avoid:

• Yellers & Screamers: It is one thing to be a fan and support your child, but to continually berate the officials during a contest is something no college coach wants to address with parents.
• Complainers: Parents will complain. It’s the nature of parenting a student-athlete. Still, some not only complain about everything, but they want everyone around them, including the coach, athletes, and parents, to know about it. That is a formula for disaster for a team and college coaches won’t deal with it.
• Constant Callers: When athletes leave home and go to college, coaches know they must watch over and take care of them. Part of that is to help athletes cope with school-related and personal problems. Moreover, coaches know that parents are concerned about their children. But when they call incessantly about every little issue, they become nuisances.
• Rubber Hammers: You know those toy hammers kids receive as gifts? Well, some parents think they have one hidden behind them. When a coach makes even a simple mistake, out comes the hammer. Some parents wait for coaching miscues and love nothing better than to wield that toy tool. Their purpose? To criticize the coaches and make them look small in the eyes of the athletes, competitors, and fans. Then they slide back in their seats and wait for the next mistake. This approach is a passive-aggressive method which, over time, damages the coach’s reputation and hurts the team. Coaches hate this.  So do scouts.
• The Lone Ranger: This is one parent who knows it all and can’t wait to spread the word. He or she immediately recognizes the problem with the coach and team and rides into town on a white horse to save the day. The Lone Ranger will not hesitate to tell a coach what’s wrong and, if the coach blows him or her off, will be in the athletic director’s office quicker than you can say, “Where’s Tonto?” Coaches despise the Lone Ranger.