Play the game because it is fun...

[Unregistered]

I have been involved in sports my whole life and have run across more uneven situations than most people would want to believe. They are what they are. People push competitive situations in all sorts of weird directions for all different reasons. The thing is helicopter parents aren't the only ones who create uneven situations so focusing on them is not going to make any difference. Personally I love winning in those situations in spite of having the cards stack against us. I find that it really does make up for all those other times when you get hosed and can't win. What I do when I encounter a bad situation is I try to take my beating like a gentleman (not always easy, not always successfully) and vow never to go back. It is amazing though how much things come around and you actually do get a shot at redemption. Nothing like a 50+ beat down to say payback is a beach.

What winning or losing? Are you playing in a club format? The easiest way to avoid such a situation is to stay out of it.

I sat away from the parents (all parents...) for the 8 years I was in MAPLE. Could not care less what they thought or did. If a team situation was bad my daughter let me know that she was unhappy and we moved elsewhere. My daughter knew why she was playing soccer and so did we. It is a sport, a nice sport, but nothing more and nothing less.

We need to stop treating youth sports like they are a profession or a religion. They are games designed to give us respite from the daily grind of life and not to add to the grind. About half the parents involved in youth soccer get it. The other half don't and I'll be damned if I am going to let them ruin my kid's experience. The are a hundred clubs to choose from. The clubs are fine without my kid and my kid is fine without the clubs.

[beentheredonethat]

What winning or losing? Are you playing in a club format? The easiest way to avoid such a situation is to stay out of it.

I sat away from the parents (all parents...) for the 8 years I was in MAPLE. Could not care less what they thought or did. If a team situation was bad my daughter let me know that she was unhappy and we moved elsewhere. My daughter knew why she was playing soccer and so did we. It is a sport, a nice sport, but nothing more and nothing less.

We need to stop treating youth sports like they are a profession or a religion. They are games designed to give us respite from the daily grind of life and not to add to the grind. About half the parents involved in youth soccer get it. The other half don't and I'll be damned if I am going to let them ruin my kid's experience. The are a hundred clubs to choose from. The clubs are fine without my kid and my kid is fine without the clubs.

I am not really disagreeing with you. I was specifically responding to this statement.

So you like it when you are in a competitive situation and you feel another party gains or takes unfair advantages or uses systems in some strategic way that you maybe could also do but you don't want to stoop to or go to those lengths???

No I don't like it but I don't think that their example is applicable to just helicopter parents. Personally I don't see how this is somehow different from getting hosed by an official in a game or even set up to fail by some school administrator who doesn't value athletics. I guess my point was that there are a lot of agenda's out there that often you can't do much about them so railing against one or the other really doesn't solve much. That is where the competition can be healthy. If you have a problem with somebody, there is nothing like beating their behind in a stupid game. I personally think that is a better solution than the alternatives.