News
Parents told to let their kids enjoy sports
03.04.2008
By Brian Heyman
PURCHASE - The sights and sounds of parents going a little too far aren't just heard at their kids' games. There's also the postgame show in the car on the way home.
"The typical parent starts the postgame analysis," Rick Wolff said. "After a while, the kid realizes it's not about having fun. It's about being a star."
The panel discussion last night inside Reid Castle on the Manhattanville College campus was called "ABCs of Better Sports Parenting."
It was the second annual symposium on the subject being conducted by the Center for Ethics in Sports at Manhattanville. Wolff, the Armonk resident and host of the WFAN show that often deals with parents and sports, "The Sports Edge," was sitting at the table at the front of the room with Bedford resident and former longtime Fox Lane High athletic director Rod Mergardt, former Pirates pitcher Fred Cambria and Mitch Huffman, the head of the Bobby Valentine Sports Academy.
John Vorperian, the director of CESAM, began the event by saying, "Youth sports should be a wondrous, fun journey." But the attorney and White Plains resident also noted statistics that show a marked dropoff in participation at the age of 13. This is no breaking news flash, but part of the reason is that some parents are taking the fun out of it for their kids.
"I think parents are pressuring a little too hard to have the C player become an A player," said Cambria, who coached college baseball at St. Leo's. "That's impossible to do. The kids lose the love of the game."
It's a complex, wide-ranging problem that heads right up into high school and even the college ranks, with coaches hearing it from parents about not playing their kids enough. As Mergardt said in borrowing an old line from another AD, "The best place to be an athletic director is in an orphanage."
But he said that kids also drop sports not only because of parental pressure, but also because they have so many other options these days. He didn't want to make this beat-up-on-all-parents night. That would be undeserved.
"Not all parents are bad parents around sports," said Mergardt, who's now an adjunct professor of sport law at Manhattanville and works as a coaching liaison with the high school Web site MaxPreps. "There's a small enough percentage that makes a mess of it for a lot of people."
There were those in the crowd of about 50 adults and students who were looking for answers about what can make the situation better.
"I don't know if there's a magic bullet," said Ed Aponte, a 48-year-old Yonkers resident who coaches baseball in the Yonkers PAL and is a father of three, including two Yonkers High athletes. "All I know as a parent and being a God-fearing person is if you love your child, or any child for that matter, and you can be involved with them and be a positive influence for them and maybe even be like a mentor, I don't think you can go wrong."
Mergardt had a word of advice for all parties: "Communicate.
"Talk to the coaches. Talk to your kids."
There's a way, though, to talk to kids. Mergardt thinks there should be a one-hour moratorium on parents bringing up the events from a game. And he said there's a way to talk to coaches and athletic directors when there's a gripe.
"You go in and have it civilly," Mergardt said.
But there was also the point made during the discussion that coaches need proper training, so parents can have more faith in them. Most of all, when it comes to youth sports, it was stressed that fun needs to be inserted back in the equation, especially since statistics show that such a small percentage grow up to make a college team.
Liz Masterson coaches soccer in the Scarsdale-based Backyard Sports program for boys and girls 3-12, a program that also includes basketball and baseball. She says the emphasis is on fun.
"Even in this, we constantly see how kids are fearful of letting their parents down and how much they aren't playing sports for their own enjoyment, but for their parents to be proud of them," Masterson said. "We're trying to instill the confidence in them so they do want to play sports for their own benefit and not for the benefit of their parents, and enjoy themselves."