Old Notes: Talking to Parents about coaching from the sideline.

                        Some points on educating Team Parents about sideline coaching:

“Parents, please don’t coach from the sideline.” 
    You open your team meeting with that, especially with a young team, and, guaranteed, there will be parents in the group who bristle.  They don’t like to be told how to behave on the sideline or how to support their kid.  So, to help them understand why it is truly best for their player’s development that the parents not do any sideline coaching you will have to patiently help them to see the situation from the coach/player side of the field.
    When you ask the parents not to coach all you are asking is that they let the players play and let their coaches coach them.  As for what the parents might be yelling from their side,  it isn’t a question of whether they know what they’re talking about. It's also about what the coach may have been working with the team on in training recently and what they want the team to be focused on in this particular game (because every game is a training opportunity).  So I tell coaches to establish from the outset that this is your team and sideline coaching is counterproductive.  Additionally, I want parents to understand that one huge developmental step that younger players are taking is that they will learn to experience and engage in the game without the mediation of their parents.  Every parent should want their kid to be able to lose themselves in the game and not be constantly checking the sideline to see how mom and dad are reacting.

     So, tell the parents to support the team loudly with cheering and praise and sympathy and with enthusiasm for the fun of the game.  But we have to also ask that they be mindful of the effect even your non-coaching support has on the players.  Be aware of how the players react to the emotional tone they hear coming from the sideline and how that can drive the players to play in a frenzied and panicked manner.  We want to encourage confident technical play at all times.  For instance, playing fast and being in a hurry are not the same thing.  We want players to develop the technical skill to be able to play quickly but a lot of emotional screaming from the parents’ sideline can encourage a team to play in a hurry, to be sloppy and to look like they’re just running downhill the whole game.  Let them have the game.  Let them figure it out.

      This ties in to how parents handle the game results and those moments post-match when a player might be nervously anticipating a parent’s reaction. I always ask parents, please, don’t spend the drive home as a post-match analysis session.  Let them ruminate on the game and they’ll talk to you about it if they want to.  To put it plainly from the perspective of an experienced coach, I can’t have players on the field whose relationship to the game runs through their parents on the sideline. 

          So, ask the parents, please don’t do anything from the sideline or after the game or training session that would encourage your player to feel that everything they do on the field is subject to your approval.   Let them fail, let them learn. Let them move on to the next thing and trust them to make progress.  The best way to encourage your player to improve is to assure them that you really enjoy watching them play...just for the joy of it.  You aren’t playing and you don’t have to encourage them to want to win.  They do want to win.  Trust me on that.  But if they think their parent only likes to watch games when the team wins then their relationship to the game and to training will be shaped by that.  A great coach who taught me at one of my licensing courses used to say that the ride-home conversation should be the same every time.  “Tell them you love watching them play then shut up.”  It is not about teaching them that winning doesn’t matter.  It is about teaching them that failing is part of the process of learning how to win.  Embrace it.  Endure it.  Learn from it and move on.

     One positive suggestion about what parents can do to help…Want to actually engage your player’s interest in the game?  Good coaches should be trying to consistently use a specific vocabulary as they teach the game and its techniques to your players.  Words like “Touch” and “Technique” and “Stroke” when describing their ball control.  Words like “Touch Line” and “Goal Line”, “Circle”, “The D”, “Eighteen” when describing the field.  Words like “Square”, “Drop” and “Through” for players to use when communicating to each other on the field.  To really enjoy their players development, parents might want to know this vocabulary and begin using it themselves.  So, Parents, ask your player to teach you the vocabulary. It is a great way to engage with their experience of the game.