My husband has been coaching youth sports since my son turned 4. What started as glorified babysitting with silly camp-like games when the kids were toddlers has morphed into a highly competitive game with sideline parenting drama 10 years later.
And while the time commitment, practice planning, and kid dynamics can make this volunteer position stressful, the real breaking point is that I simply no longer have the mental bandwidth for the youth sport parent bullsh*t. And so I am finally making him hang up his whistle for good.
Despite all of his best efforts to avoid the fray, as a volunteer coach he seems unavoidably the target of a lot of frustration and disappointment. If he does equal playing time, he is called a “soft serve” and told that elite players need to dominate the field for a win. If he does talent-based playing time, parents of less developed players express their concerns about their kid’s athletic development and self esteem. It’s impossible to make everybody happy. No matter what he does, there’s after-practice chats, phone calls, and emails. It leads to extra planning and long, thoughtful conversations about conflict navigation and honestly, I’m tired of it.
Because it doesn’t just affect him as the coach — it affects our whole family. These silly sports-related dramas become mood dictators and topics of late night conversation. It affects my relationships with parents of kids on the team. And since I know so many of these frustrated parents talk so openly and passionately about this stuff at home, putting their child’s sports records and performance at the top of the family priority list, I worry about how this might affect my son’s relationship with his teammates. And that is definitely a stress I would like to take off of my plate.
And selfishly, I need my husband on the sidelines with me. Because while I already find it intolerable to be around a bunch of adults yelling at and about a children’s game, now they are yelling at and about my husband too. Instead of having a sane confidant next to me while I endure the chorus of voices reprimanding their sons about their supposed lack of effort or intensity, I’m alone. I’m done with the solo mission.
The saddest part is that my husband is an excellent youth coach. He cares about all the right things: character building, having fun, and working together. Couple that with a unique understanding of sports and the ability to explain and teach young kids effectively, and he just does it right. Oh, and he loves it — like, a lot. But this year when I finally sat him down for a pretty serious conversation about the downsides of coaching, he agreed. Because all the character traits that make him such a great coach are the same ones that make it so difficult for him to tune out all the noise and drama that parents bring into the equation. And at this point, he is just as frustrated and burnt out as I am.
So this season, he is stepping away from his coaching role. And although I feel sad for the numerous young boys who will no longer have access to his kind and effective youth coaching style, I am hoping to regain a bit of family sanity. And as for dealing with the parent sideline nonsense without the coaching component… well, there are earplugs for that.
