It’s easy to be a great sports dad. Unfortunately, it’s just as easy to become a terrible one. With Father’s Day approaching FTW lists 11 ways to become the former and avoid being the latter.
1. Your child is not getting a college scholarship.
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Go in with that mentality, please. If he or she happens to be good enough to get one, fantastic. But don’t think of your chid’s fun activities as something that’s going to save you money down the road. If that’s your primary goal when signing Junior up for first-grade basketball, you’re going to take the fun out of all of it, for both you and your child.
2. Don’t bother the coach. Ever.
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I don’t care if you played midfielder for your Division II college. I don’t care if you played midfielder for a team that won the Division I national championship. I don’t care if you’re Landon Donovan. The coach is there to coach and you are there to either pick your kid up from practice or watch/cheer from the sideline. If your child is young enough, you should lend your time to volunteering to coach so your knowledge can go to use. But once that child hits a club team or high-school team, zip the lips. There is nothing more annoying as a coach than a parent coming up to you and talking in the middle of practice. No, strike that; there is something more annoying: When adults come up to the coach during practice to ask why they’re either doing this or not doing that or to make suggestions about what their child should be doing, a process which almost always includes the comment, “you know, I played in college,” which is always meant more as a threat than a boast.
3. Keep the post-practice/game chats short.
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Don’t evaluate your daughter’s softball abilities to her after a game. Don’t tell your son to get in front of the ball after a game spent at shortstop. Don’t let your twins know that their relay starts need practice. Be encouraging. Be enthusiastic. Treat a win like a win and a loss like a win. This country is going down the wrong path with its “everybody wins!” culture, but it’s okay when you’re a parent, especially of a young athlete. Learning sportsmanship and how to lose is just as important as learning to win.
4. Unless you are volunteering, your job is to watch. And if you’re volunteering, your job is to volunteer. Also, volunteer.
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There’s not much more to that. Volunteering is the lifeblood of youth sports. Don’t be one of those parents who brings a folding chair and acts like he didn’t get the email about bringing oranges for halftime.
5. Encourage multiple sports at least until your child hits 7th grade.
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Far too many kids have burned out of sports before hitting puberty. It’s especially bad in individual sports, when there’s no teammates to lift the burden. I’ve seen dozens of swimmers quit the sport because they started practicing five times a week at age nine. A child should explore a number of sports, as well as other pursuits such as piano lessons or language school, to provide both an exploration of the things they really love and a well-rounded childhood in general. This isn’t 1890. The kids aren’t helping out on the farm at age 4. Let them have their childhood.
6. Even after getting to the point of choosing one sport, allow your child to play multiple sports if they so desire.
A football star needs to stay strong after the season, so indoor track or wrestling is a natural. If your child is a tennis player and No. 1 in the county, there’s nothing wrong with running cross country (provided the seasons don’t interfere, of course) to build stamina and endurance.
7. Don’t cheer obnoxiously.
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I was born, raised and currently live in a D.C. suburb and was an assistant coach at my pool for almost a dozen summers. During two of those seasons, our team was in the same division as the team of future gold medalist Katie Ledecky. Even as a 9-10 (her age group), everyone knew she was destined for big things. In fact, I recall my buddy, the head coach, saying something about the Olympics as we watched her swim as a 10-year-old. But after the six times we saw Ledecky over those two summers, I realized something: I had no idea who her parents were. That never happens.
Oftentimes, the parents of the the best swimmers are the ones making the most noise, acting like every race is the semifinals at the Olympics, running poolside to wrap a towel around their swimmer like they’re a mini James Brown and feeding them some protein as to get ready for the next race. Same goes for any other sport. And the parents who do those things tend to be the ones who see their kids burn out.
8. Never complain about driving carpools or long distances.
Once you have a child, it’s never about you anymore. (You know what we do for my birthday now that I have a daughter? Say “happy birthday, daddy” in the morning and then go about the day as normal.) But that’s the way it’s supposed to be. So don’t make your kids feel guilty for the long drives in traffic or the tournaments in different states or sitting in a driving downpour to watch a lacrosse game or surviving those four-hour indoor swim meets in sauna-like conditions or getting up early to drive to hockey practice. Though your children might not appreciate it at the time, they’ll realize later in life the sacrifices you made for them.
9. Don’t force your child to like the sports teams you like.
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Dress your child up in your favorite team’s jersey when they’re young, take them to games, have them sit on the couch with you on Sundays, but never compel them to like the same awful football team you like. Every parent knows this already: The more you want your child to become something, the less likely they are to do so. This can work for both playing and watching sports.
10. But also don’t let your kid be a fair-weather fan, rooting for whichever NFL team is doing best.
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There is a pox on society and it is the Russell Wilson jerseys I see on kids in and around Washington — the D.C. version. There’s nothing wrong with liking Wilson, but becoming a fan of a team that you have no connection to while living 3,000 miles away from their home stadium is the worst. But if your kid is hellbent on loving the Seahawks while living in New Jersey, that’s fine. But what’s not fine is those Russell Wilson fans becoming Marcus Mariota fans if he becomes a stud with the Titans. No flip-flopping. That how you build character.
11. It’s not about you.
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Say it again: It’s not about you. It’s about your love for your child and doing whatever you can to make your son or daughter happy. I really want my 17-month-old daughter to become a swimmer like I was. I’m hoping she swims in A-meets as a six-year-old and loves the sport as much as I do. But if she hates the water, is a “drowner” or can never figure out how to breathe properly on her freestyle, I’ll have to let it go and encourage her to try other sports. And if that sport happens to be soccer, I can always disown her.
