Parental Controls - For the Coach

A high school or club coach’s career is full of challenges. Often times you’ll spend all your free time figuring out the strategy to beat the cross town rival. You might find yourself trying to connect with an athlete to get that fire in her game that you can see in her soul. Sometimes the challenge of the season is to get your schedule set early enough so that everyone knows they have practice tomorrow. The hardest test by far, however, is in handling the unhappy parents of athletes on the team. Surprisingly enough, regardless of the “problem” perceived by the parent, experience will tell you that parent management is relatively basic if you are prepared. There are four basic steps in the process. Skip one and you’ll find yourself painted in an ugly corner.

1. Set Ground Rules for the Team BEFORE Concerns Arise.

A. Your perspective drives your coaching style. Make sure you communicate to your parents and athletes, your philosophy and expectations on every aspect that is important to you. Especially in the areas of commitment, attendance, play time decisions, goals of the team. This is more commonly known as your coaching philosophy, only with details.

B. If a parent feels inclined to discuss a concern, draw out the procedure of approach. Depending on the age level or topic of discussion, a good order of process would involve:

Athlete addressing the issue with coach
-if the issue is not resolved-

Athlete and parent addressing issue with coach
-if the issue is not resolved-

Athlete, parent, coach meet with the club director/athletic director
If the parent or athlete have an emotionally driven concern, require a 24 hour wait period so that all parties concerned can arrange a congenial meeting rather than subject anyone to a ranting rampage.

C. Insist that the athlete is involved in the communication process. This ensures that everyone is hearing and understanding the situation, and involves the growth and development of the athlete as a person.

2. Listen to the Message (not the delivery)
Everybody is different. Some are more emotional than others in terms of their children. Others jump right into the accusatory mode of destroying their child. Luckily, some parents will come with the appropriate mentality of wanting to understand the decisions you make as a coach. Sift through the emotional display. Hold on to and only address the parent concerns that are appropriate to discuss. Refuse to discuss other players’ issues or attitudes with a parent. Get concrete facts of concern. Most areas of discussion include play time for the athlete or playing to win as a team. Be sure you have a pattern of consistency in these areas. No one has to agree with your policies, they only need to understand. Areas that should be of utmost importance include the physical safety of the players, illegal activities, or inappropriate actions that will reflect poorly on your program. Rumors are exactly that. Address facts only.

3. Mirror the Parent Concern

First and foremost, the parent needs to know his or her voice is being heard. As an adult, they have that right to respect. Even if you have to take notes, reflect to the parent what you understand is their concern. If the parent has concerns about items that cannot be discussed, let them know up front that you are not in a position to address that concern and explain (briefly) why.

4. Find the Calmest Ground

Concerns have 3 end results:

A. Address the issue at hand, explaining, from the coach’s perspective, why you have made the decisions that have upset them. They don’t have to agree, they only need to understand.

B. If you have refused to discuss a topic (IE another player’s play time) and the parent won’t let it go, suggest they contact your club director/athletic director. Their job is to support you and protect the program. If your boss wants to change the rules, then so be it. However, more often, the parent will find a dead end there as well.

C. Agree to consider their concerns. Believe it or not, sometimes as coaches, we forget things or inadvertently neglect situations to which we should be attending. You don’t need to admit to any short-sightedness, but the offer of reconsidering your thoughts in a situation can at least leave the parent feeling respected whether you change anything or not. Always contact the parent with a follow up conversation or email to communicate the result of your reconsiderations.

It cannot be said enough that the parent, athlete, and coach perspective of the team’s management are three completely different views. The parent and athlete perspectives are legitimate personal opinions and should be addressed respectfully. However, in the end, it is the coach’s perspective that controls the program. Certainly as a coach, we’ve made mistakes, but they are our mistakes for which we must take responsibility and learn.

Should a volleyball player play up an age group in club volleyball?

Say there is a very good high school junior who normally would be on a 17's club team, but has been asked to be on an 18's team. Should this volleyball player play up an age group for her club volleyball season?

The pro's of playing up:

• Better competition; all in all, a high school senior is better than a high school junior.
• More prestige.
  
• Possibly more expoure to college coaches. If you are playing in a 17/18's bracket, your 18's team might rank higher than most 17's teams and higher ranked teams generally have college coaches stay longer to watch.

The con's of playing up:

• If you don't play much college coaches can't see you. Even though you might start on many 17's teams, if you don't play, it is hard to get noticed.
• You miss a year of bonding with players your own age.
• If your 17's team isn't very good you might not get college coaches watching.

Ech situation is different, but in general, it is not only important to receive high quality coaching during competitive practices, it is important to be seen at tournaments if you have college aspirations.

Is there a "lucky side" to pick when selecting which side of the volleyball court

Is there a "lucky side" to pick when selecting which side of the volleyball court to defend. I have had the dubious benefit of having multiple college level statistics courses, so the analyst in me said it really didn't matter. Then one day I saw our high school coach tell the team captain to change her pick of which side to defend for game 5.

I asked him afterwards why it mattered, as it really shouldn't. He said in many high school gyms, and especially in volleyball club facilities, there is a difference as the backgrounds can make it harder to see the volleyball clearly.

He uses an unscientific method to select which side to defend; he selects the side that has produced the most wins for either team.

Volleyball Club Coaches are Like Portfolio Managers

A parent recently was complaining that there really was nothing she could do if she didn't like a high school volleyball coach or volleyball club coach; that she was really at the whim and favor of the coach, who just happened to not be playing her daughter too much in tournaments.

I stated that a club volleyball coach is different from a high school volleyball coach in that a club coach is more like a portfolio manager. We entrust our valuable portfolio to the manager and pay him or her a fee to manage and improve the value of our portfolio for a specific time period, generally of 6 months.

At the end of this time period our daughters are returned to us, hopefully with more value (and hopefully they had fun) and skills than when we engaged the coach at the beginning of the season.

If they are, we consider retaining the same portfolio manager for next club season, and if not, we find a new manager.