In watching the Texas v. Georgia, USA Final game of the LLWS, it was mentioned that a Little Leaguers parents (I think the catcher for Texas) have both been fired by their employers … well the broadcaster (Musburger) said they were fired by “nonunderstanding” employers. Seems the two parents were taking a lot of time off to travel to post-season tournament games.
It’s not surprising given that these kids have been involved in tournament after tournament for practically the last month to decide who will represent the US in the LLWS. I’m not sure how long the parent “stay” in Williamsport, PA … but the tourney last a little more than 2 weeks.
One has to wonder just how much time off the Texas couple had asked for (or simply taken off).
The unbelievable parts are that a company would be called “nonunderstanding” because they won’t extra grant time off so a person can travel the country to watch their 12 year old’s baseball games (televised games no less), and that the parents said we “had to have our priorities”.
Without trying to get all judgemental, wouldn’t keeping a job (i.e., income for the family) take priority over spending a week at a place for a tournament, another week elsewhere for a tournament, and a longer stay in PA? Seriously, I can’t imagine anything involving kid’s sports taking precedence over providing for the fmaily (am I missing something?)
There’s a “happy ending” though. Since the story was published. The two parents have been offered scored of jobs by Good Samaritans. Thank goodness. You know there’s something wrong when a US family loses their job for missing work to travel their country to watch a 12yo baseball tournaments. I’m just glad we don’t let the start of the schoolyear affect the LLWS. grin
Do you think the kids have learned at this age that, in the US, sports are more important than anything … or are they just starting to learn that now?
Mostly it is the other parents. They all think their kid is the next A-rod, or whatever. Additionally when I played there was about 15-20 games a summer, and once games started there were no practices. Now, it is a 2 hour practice 2-3 times a week and 2 games a week for T-ball? I mean come on, 2 hours practice for T-ball that is just foolish.
We go to the diamonds every day. It’s just what my son wants to do (although there are likely many parents who see us there, and make an assumption). At the end we almost always stop and watch some of the older kids’ games (10-12yo). The thing I cannot stand are the absolutely moronic and negative things parents/coaches say toward players to let everyone in the place know that that THEY did not teach that kid to make that mistake.
Do parents REALLY think their kid missed the groundball, swung at the pitch over their head, got thrown out, made the bad throw, missed the pitch, walked the bases loaded, etc … on purpose?
You mix equal parts grown adults and competitive sports for their kids and you get a complete loss of rational thought.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the need to teach kids about competition and how to deal with both winning and losing, but it seems to me that the basis for a lifelong love of sports is to have kids enjoy sports to begin with, and it seems like parents frequently forget that part.
These overzealous parents pushing their kids competitive sports too far probably explains why a lot of the former jocks from your high school days are fat, out of shape and have not picked up a ball since they were 18 years old.
As a parent whose daughter plays fast pitch softball on a national level, I totally disagree with a parent who lets sports take precident over the good of the rest of the family. We have traveled to the softball version of the LLWS twice now, and both me and my husband have arranged our vacation (yes, vacation…) time to be at important tournaments. But we do not take extra days to go to these tournaments, and to my knowledge, none of the other parents on our team do that either. There is no way on God’s earth we would jeopardize our jobs…one or the other goes so that someone is there, but if there is no time off, so be it. The reality for us is, softball tournaments ARE our vacations. That is life on a travel team for some of us.
ASA softball is VERY big here … so big that often high school softball is viewed as a “pres-seaon” for the ASA 60-game schedule. A buddy I coach with disdains the idea that ASA/travelling teams take precedence over high school sports. Recently his 7yo daughter (talented) was asked to take part in a travelling team to go up to the Chicago suburbs for a 2-day tournament. I asked him, “You told them HELL NO!, right?” and we both laughed hysterically. Yes, they went to the tournament, had a blast, and won a couple of games against much better organizations. It’s a situation many of us are going to face.
My big concerns for these for the older kids is that they cannot work while playing; it’s the same group of exclusive parents; the travel costs, etc. Essentially you end up with a “country club” atmosphere regarding youth sports, and that can lead to major conflicts in sports when the same group of kids that stuck together through the travelling teams are competing for jobs with those that haven’t (even the talented ones). It’s even more risky if the high school coach has had some affiliation with those youth travelling programs. It can easily lead to a situation to where if you want to play varsity sports, you better be on every travelling team from age 8 and on up.
I don’t think these programs are caused BY the parents. I think the kids want to play that many games, I think the kids want to play in tournament after tournament, I think the kids want to travel all over the country, I KNOW the kids want to be on TV, I think the kids treat baseball as if it is the most important thing in life, I think they want to be ultra-competitive, I think they want baseball to be the focus of the family … but that’s where the parents come in and rather than enable that type of attitude, they provide some balance.
I don’t know what the answer is. I signed my 6yo up for 1st/2nd grade soccer (and coach/sponsor the team … Red Storm, BTW), and soon to sign up for 1st/2nd flag football. If there’s a 7th/8th grade baseball game on the same date/time as soccer he begs me if he can go to the baseball game (he’s the bat boy) while I go to soccer. I try to diversify his interests, but it just results in him knowing that he loves baseball more than anythng else. I don’t know whether to continue introducing him to new things or to just feed the machine. At this point, I think given the choice of opening Christmas presents or spending the day at the diamonds, he’d choose the latter regardless of temperature or other effects.
Anyway, thanks for listening. I’ll send ya a check.
The answer is let your kids do what they enjoy doing, encourage them to be the best at it - but do not encourage irresponsible behavior and never MAKE them do something just because you want them to. This is why we have Michael Vick’s and many other athletes committing felonies, spitting on umpires, gianr brawls in baseball games, fighting in hockey games, doing drugs, etc. Hell even parents are killing each other at games. Their priorities are f*cked up because the parents (and society) allows it. We stopped going to baseball and hockey games years ago because the sports themselves have been lost to the “sideshows” and rude “darwin” like behavior by the dumbass parents.
The LLWS is stupid - it’s little league for crying out loud.
I think they have their priorities in order. If they weren’t worried about providing for the family; if they thought they could secure another job in the near future; and if they had enough money to get them through a period of unemployment; then they were enjoying a once in a lifetime experience with their son.
When I see situations like this, I am reminded of the old saying:
‘‘No one on their death bed wishes they had spent more time at work.’’
I don’t know the specifics of this case, so won’t comment directly.
I will say that the priority that parents (fathers) place on sports for their children is rediculous. I’m amazed at how often I hear about how important parents feel it is to get their kids involved in sports at an early age, but at the same time do very little to get them to start reading at an early age. It may not be the majority, but I’ve heard it enough times.
I think team sports are GREAT for kids, but too often the parents take it way too seriously. Anyone ever see the stand clearing brawl over a T-Ball game??? I was fortunate enough to run XC and track, where the clock doesn’t lie…no matter how cool someone else’s father is.
The most important lesson I think that kids can learn from these sports is that it is more important to be popular or have popular family members that it is to actually be good at something. I could go on, but the best examples I can give are:
My brother missing an all star spot in little league to the coach’s and ast. coach’s sons despite having the highest batting average on the team and the highest slugging percentage in the division.
Me missing an all star spot to the two ast. coach’s kids. The reasoning the coach gave was that they “always showed up to practice early.” Had I known that was the criteria, I would have driven my car to practice early every game (you know…because I had a license at 13 years old). Side note: This was just a shitty YMCA league, so its not like I was a real athlete.
When I was a teacher, we had a popular kid in school who was a decent basketball player. Is uncle coached the team and his Dad was a volunteer asistant. The kid was player of the year in our small county (5 small high schools). He also played every minute of every game and all of the plays were designed for him to score. Every other coach in the county knew that the team was set up not to win games, but to try to get this kid a scholarship (hence the team’s losing record). The irony is he went off to play for a D3 school and found out that he wasn’t that good. He dropped out after one semester and came back to play for the local CC.
He had a younger brother who was a freshman the following year. His uncle stopped coaching so his Dad (who was not a teacher) applied for the coaching job and got it over myself (a certified teacher in the school with coaching experience in other sports) and over a teacher from the elementary school that coached high school boys basketball before. This was in direct violation of our contracts. I let it go, but the other teacher threatened a law suit. I eneded up getting the job as a result. They made the father my assistant. Long story short, I hated dealing with whiney kids who all thought they were super stars and their parents who cared more about HS basketball then they did about their kids passing classes…I vowed never to coach BBall again.
The following year the AD found a teacher in the school (another “cool guy”) who served as a puppet coach. He applied for the job and coached JV, taking on the father as the coach of the varsity team (get it? This is how you get around the contract so that the kids father can coach the team). The kid got pretty good at basketball, but was a better pitcher. He could have gotten into most top D1 baseball programs…except his grades weren’t very good.
People need to keep things in perspective. It’s just a game.
Triple, I agree with much of what you’re saying. We do the ASA, USSSA, and AFA tournaments and I think the ASA is the most blatant as far as money/time spent by coaches, players and parents. I believe this league is dominated by the warm weather teams, i.e. SoCal, Texas, Georgia, some Arizona and Tennessee; it is not unusual for their seasons to be well over 125 games.
The money has been an issue for us. We ask the grandparents to help us out, which they graciously do. So we split the fees 3 ways. Each season we ask each other (me, husband and daughter) - are we still having fun? Is anyone burning out? It’s especially asked of my daughter, but she honestly loves it, loves the competition and it’s part of her identity right now.
Here in IL the high school season takes precedence over the travel season. Travel doesn’t start until HS season is over. 14U and under have longer seasons, most starting in April, because the girls are still in 8th grade.
BTW, Barry, I understand the politics. Our girls are playing up this year (technically 14U going up to 16U) and the manager’s daughter is on the team, and she’s nowhere near the 16U level. But they are a package deal (sigh).
Do these teams not have sponsors, or do fund raisers? I played for ‘‘travel teams’’ in baseball and basketball for many years, and we were always sponsored by one or more local businesses and conducted numerous fund raisers to pay the fees the sponsors didn’t cover. My wife still plays competitive soccer and her ‘‘over 30’’ team is covered by 3 sponsors, we don’t pay a dime.
Oh, yes, we have many sponsors and have fund raisers as well. It’s better this coming season because our fund raising is more coordinated. But we maintain our fields, hold our own tournament in July, etc. Fees depend on several things…how many players on the team, how many teams in the program, how many tournaments you plan to do. The travel itself comes into play, too - hotels, gas, food. Actually, softball is not as bad as some other sports - one of the moms on the team has a son on travel hockey and his fees are almost triple ours.
I think what is making me a little nervous now is the injuries that I’m starting to see, especially as we start into the higher competition levels. Teams are starting to use a new composite material bat and the ball just explodes off this thing. Some infields (especailly pitchers) are starting to wear face guards.
Yeah, the aluminum and composite bats are out of control. I think baseball has recently scaled back on the size of the ‘‘sweet spot,’’ and the diameter/length/weight ratios. I think softball needs to take a serious look at its bats.
Yeah, the aluminum and composite bats are out of control. I think baseball has recently scaled back on the size of the ‘‘sweet spot,’’ and the diameter/length/weight ratios. I think softball needs to take a serious look at its bats.
It’s the opportunity of a lifetime for kids who play & love baseball. If my sons ever play to that level, they would expect me to be there, and I would do whatever it took, even if I had to leave a job due to an employer who did not “understand…”
Obviously, we can see where this is going…bash/question the “Little League Parent.” Let’s be honest, although there might not be as many, because the popularity of baseball & other team sports FAR outweighs the popularity of triathlon, there have been plenty of instances, - some of which I’ve seen - of parents trying to push kids beyond their limits while racing or training, bitching at race officials, and wanting to “get a piece” of another parent for something that was said. The attitude is everywhere, unfortunately. We as parents just have to do our est to protect our kids from those situations, and the #1 way to do it is to avoid becoming one of those jasckasses ourselves…
