It went a little like this: Me: thanks everybody for being here. I'm truly honored to coach these girls... Him: "hurry up. Get to the point" Me: "we are learning to play good soccer. It may cost is a goal or 2, but it will be better for long term development" Him: "I don't even know what the ******** you are talking about. What's the ********ing point?" And so on.
okay i think i can see what he was getting at. there is no such thing as long term. we are all dead in the long term. he wanted you to focus on stocking the trophy cabinet now.
I would have made the same mistake in my first parents meeting. I was going over what I was going to say with another coach and he panicked and told me "You can't say that!" (i.e., "I don't care about winning, I just want the girls to learn how to play soccer and have fun.") He explained that the parents of these U10 girls were already planning on their kids making the travel team next year and then earning college scholarships. So I learned my first youth coaching lesson and lied to the parents about my priorities. The other teams were all poorly coached so the girls learned to play, had fun, and finished in first place too.
It must be extremely difficult for the mother in this situation. As this all unfolds I feel really bad for her. Living away from home, trying to support kids; balancing work, soccer, school, a seemingly intolerable boyfriend and a possible drinking problem.. and now she's can't drive either. She might feel trapped in her relationship with this guy. She probably feels as though she can't juggle all these responsibilities on her own. I feel awful for her child, even though i'm only reading about this online. I've known a few kids in similar situations, a few personal friends and soccer mates and it usually doesn't end well. It would probably mean a lot to her if you took a few minutes one time to just ask her if she's okay.. she'll likely say everything's fine regardless of whether it actually is or not, but just showing that you genuinely care means a lot to people in such situations. Good luck with this whole thing.
Have you seen the commercials about buzzed driving? At first I thought they were talking about drunk driving. Then I thought with all the talk about marijuana. That is what they meant when they say buzzed driving. That problem will be big down the road excuse the play on words. It is not the same grass as it was when I was a kid. Much more powerful now. That will be a problem with youth players. In the older days once we found out kid is going to games high. We could not help him anymore. We let parents know and he never saw another minute playing on the team. We had a fantastic sweeper on the team. Great player and more important a great person. His father owned a pizza parlor he through parties for us in his place. The son loved his father. Then the father was arrested part of the pizza connection bust years ago. He and others were importing heroin into the US. It destroyed his son. We tried to help him because he was suffering because of the sins of his father. Nothing helped he could not be reached anymore and just stopped coming. I ran into him about 7 yrs latter walking in Kings Plaza here in Brooklyn. I did not recognize him at first, but when he saw me he said hello. Still a polite kid but anyone could see he was now on drugs.