A Coaching Crisis
We have a nationwide coaching crisis. Good coaches are an endangered species. It’s too difficult to find qualified coaches or parents who are willing to step forward and coach a team. There’s simply too much personal and professional risk to make it worth it for them.
It’s probably not a stretch to say most youth sports teams in America have at least one set of parents capable of tormenting the team’s coach because of the way they perceive their child being treated. To put a finer point on it, there are too many parents across youth sports who are highly motivated to pull that lever if their child is not treated according to their expectations.
The youth sports industrial complex has evolved to this point where most kids are playing in some kind of organization or league. But while the business has progressed, the ability to get good coaches—the kinds of memorable coaches we want our children to experience—has arguably waned as the rewards are simply not as great as the risks. Not even close.
But I think there are ways to address this within the realities of the new youth athletics infrastructure—ways that would work within the context of school sports as well as AAU and privately organized leagues.
Here are a few rules or conditions that may protect any coach who’s considering volunteering or taking a youth sports coaching job.
Parents should be required to sign a coach’s anti-bullying contract before their children are allowed to participate on a team. This contract must have teeth, and the coach or organization should not be afraid to enforce it. It’s fairly normal for kids to sign a version of this that includes team rules. This one is specifically for the parents.
All parent complaints must first go to the team coach before any other league body or parent committee will hear it. Parents must be trained to ask, “Have you spoken to the coach?” before allowing a team parent to complain to them. The inability to directly confront a person with whom you have an issue is not just a youth sports problem. It’s a growing cultural problem in this country, made easier by the availability of social media platforms to anonymously air one’s complaints. Taking complaints or issues directly to the person with whom you have the issue is always going to be the best way—even if you need a mediator. If the two parents in “Nothing Ruins Youth Sports Like Adults” had brought their complaints directly to the coach, none of that story would have happened (because they never would have brought this to him directly).
Every team should have a committee of three to five parents (including faculty or a neutral third-party for school teams) who can hear “confidential” parental concerns, work to address concerns, and sniff out any retaliatory attempts to destroy a coach because of any perceived slights against that parent’s child.
The coach gets to read any claims and evidence presented against them as soon as the complaint(s) is made. They should not be left in the dark regarding any matter that relates to them, their actions, or anything they may have said.
A coach should be interviewed first when any complaint is investigated, and then last, after all other interviews have been conducted. This prevents any sneak attacks or surprises against a coach.
Whenever an investigation that involves the athletes is warranted, their parents (and union representatives, in school settings) must be informed their child may be interviewed before any investigation can proceed. Copies of interview notes or transcripts must be made available to parents before they are officially recognized as investigation evidence against or for a coach.
A neutral party must be present when an athlete is interviewed for an investigation. That neutral party is sensitive to any leading questions of the athlete and works to protect the integrity of the investigation for all parties.
A governing body or school district cannot hide any allegation made against a coach, no matter how frivolous or irrelevant they think it may be. In the book, there were pages of documentation generated by one of the parents that we did not see. One may argue the district was protecting the coaches, but the problem was that it was all available to the public and could be distributed without any opportunity for the coaches to respond to the allegations.
Whenever a complaint is made against a coach, that coach should have the right to talk about any or all allegations in public. This is a tough one, because it assumes the person complaining is out in the wild destroying that coach’s reputation to anyone who would listen. But this rule may also serve as a disincentive for the person complaining to make it public.
As is happening with state law regarding frivolous lawsuits, there should be consequences for any parents who make frivolous or unfounded complaints against a team coach. This could be determined by the same committee mentioned in number three. Again, by adding consequences, everyone will think twice before acting too quickly or emotionally to a perceived wrong.
This last one is specifically for school sports teams: All athletic directors should be subject to an annual 360 review by their coaches. At the end of each season, an athletic director will conduct an evaluation of that coach for assessment and record-keeping. This step would allow the coaches to give actionable and productive feedback that could be used for athletic director performance improvement.
This is hardly an exhaustive list, and I’m sure you could come up with at least one or two of your own. But this gives any sports team a headstart on setting up a climate in which coaches can work with some assurances that their work, their planning, and their reputations have some protections.