FIRST AND SHORT

Coach's Confidential: Does winning beget more complaining?

JR Radcliffe
jr.radcliffe@jrn.com

We asked our anonymous panel of coaches if the volume of parent (and outsider) complaints increases with the number of wins a program accumulates. You can visit our archive of all Coach's Confidential questions and see a new one each week at The Push.

Week 7, 2016: Do you think a program's level of success leads to greater unwelcome interference/complaints from parents and others around the program? Or do you feel all programs face pretty much the same challenges in this regard?

Coach 1: Parents will be parents no matter what the record is. You roll the dice and hope it is a good year for parent support. If you are winning, then complaining parents want their kid to be a part of it. If you are losing, then complaining parents want their kid to be the one to fix it. Parents just don't understand.

Coach 2: All programs face a variety of challenges throughout the course of the year, ranging from all types of sources, including but not limited to parents. It is on the coaches within the program to establish healthy, positive, and strong relationships with all of those within your program, parents included.

Coach 3: I think all programs do indeed face similar challenges, but I also think greater success leads to increased scrutiny, expectations and entitlements and assumptions.

Coach 4: There’s a great quote out there from Rodney Weddig of Big Foot, something like, “Parents who are a part of losing programs want that program to win and parents who are a part of winning programs want that team to keep winning and have their kid be the star.” I think complaints and grousing take different forms, but it’ll always be there.

Coach 5: "Haters gonna hate."  It is true that if you have success, you more than likely face more criticism and scrutiny.