Not nice parents

[Unregistered]

While the yellers and the screamers do their bit to undermine soccer, and these parents exist in every youth sport in this country, and in others as well. They are just a part of the ever increasing crumbling of civility and manners in our society.
You see this not only on prime time TV, (ie Kanya West's troubling accent to the stage to take away an award from a young singer, but also in the rantings of those in elected office).
As bad as they are there is a second group that disturbs me more. Some teams have one or two, and some teams are fortunate and have none. Theses parents are the most incidious, I think. This group are the ones who worm their way onto a team for a myriad of reasons, some being, to take down a coach, to elevate their son or daughter, or just undermine a program until they get their way. Sometimes the goals of these parents are clear, and sometimes it is not apparant until too late. The first group, the yellers, well, they are up front and easy to identify, the second group, the wormers, work undercover and are manipulating. Both groups are bad, but I would rather see what I am facing than never see it coming.

[Unregistered]

"I'd rather dance with the devil I know, then the one I don't" - or something like that.

Now you've intrigued me. If you, or anyone else on the forum, can elaborate more about the second group, I would love to hear it. At least then I could have some sense of what to look for. Even though it would NEVER happen at OUR club! Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!

[Unregistered]

"I'd rather dance with the devil I know, then the one I don't" - or something like that.

Now you've intrigued me. If you, or anyone else on the forum, can elaborate more about the second group, I would love to hear it. At least then I could have some sense of what to look for. Even though it would NEVER happen at OUR club! Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!

Just to put it in a nutshell, first I am from Florida, so that post had nothing to do with your teams. In fact, I have seen some Florida posters post on here. I think they click on the "new post" icon on the top of the page and then find something interesting.

Mom of a defender on the #2 team asked for her son to practice with the #1 team. This team was then ranked #9 in the nation on nationalsoccerrankings.com. She asked to help the team manager in exchange for this.
This was years ago, and this team had been accepted into the showcase division of the Disney showcase. Because the team was about 90% hispanic and because the parents were hard working and did not attend a lot of tournament and games, she offered to download all of the players resumes onto the database for us. (By this time she had gotten her son onto the team as the 19th player).
We all gave her our sons resumes, and thought all was good. About three weeks before the tournament, the goalie's mom and me, checked the Disney site for our team, and found that the "bad mom" son's was listed as a top right side defender and he had a long and glowing resume. The hispanic defender who was great and was the right back starting defender, he had nothing. That defender ended up with an academic and soccer scholarship to a top university. My son, a starter at mid, had only parents names, addresses and phone number, nothing else. He ended up with a academic and soccer scholarship to a Northeast D1 school. Goalies mom's son had some things, but not all. He went on to William and Mary on an academic and soccer scholarship. Starting forward, had a few things, but not all. We went on to UNC and ended up this year in the MLS.
We decided to publish brochures for the team. We even offered to add her son, but she refused, saying it was unneeded since she had already published the resumes on the Disney database.
We went ahead and handed out our brochures at the stadium to the incoming coaches.
She was the worst parent that I have ever come into contact with. There are more stories about her that are even worse than that.

[Unregistered]

BTW, those players that mentioned were not the only ones whos resumes were shortened or non existant, just about the bulk of the team, the only resumes that were long and glowing were the managers, (whose sons was good and had nothing to do with this, her son and a couple of others, the rest were not there, other than parents names and addresses and some like the stating right defender had nothing.
WE did go in and fix it, but also put out the brochures that the coaches did take.

[Unregistered]

My God, that is UNBELIEVABLE! How can a parent do that?! Did she think in some way it would go unnoticed? I mean every club has a parent or two that are "Goofy" but to pull a dirty underhanded stunt like that that could be detrimental to the future of a player???

She would have been strung up by her toenails by me personally!! You sound very patient and I commend you for that. I would not have been able to show such control.

[Unregistered]

My God, that is UNBELIEVABLE! How can a parent do that?! Did she think in some way it would go unnoticed? I mean every club has a parent or two that are "Goofy" but to pull a dirty underhanded stunt like that that could be detrimental to the future of a player???

She would have been strung up by her toenails by me personally!! You sound very patient and I commend you for that. I would not have been able to show such control.

That all was true and some other things that she did, were even worse. As for self control, I used to teach SBH (severe behaviorally handicapped) teenagers art in a treatment center. No lie.

[Unregistered]

Have the parent sign a parental code of conduct and remove that parent from the sideline when they screw up. Kids get to play youth sports once and do not need some loser making it a bad experience for all.

The funny thing is the parent acting like a jerk was usually the kid that was not good at sports as a kid and now has re-invented themself into a "expert" as an adult!!

Great advice.

[Unregistered]

Holy crap

The thing i found most interesting about this thread is it shows being around since 2009. How hard did you have to look to drag that up? And WOW!! parents have been this crazy since 2009. The more things change the more they stay the same.