Coaching Yute basketball- need some help from you fuckers

[Wulaw Horn 19077]

10 minutes ago, softlynow said:

Have fun with the parents. Go Norman Dale and require 4 passes every possession, practices without a ball, bench a couple and play with 4 to end a game, hire an alcoholic to be your assistant, get thrown out and let the alcoholic finish the game.

I’m only half kidding. My way to say “fuck ‘em” would be to finish the year my way, and not let them know they bugged me.

Any way, good luck. You’re a brave one for doing it, a better parent than any of those others. 

Ha. My dads helping me and while not an alcoholic he is pretty drunk by 7:00 every night. He’s an old man so he’s got nothing better to do I guess. 
the biggest dickhead was my star players dad (I think) who called me last night before the game and basically told me I should consider myself incredibly lucky he deigned to put his kid in this league and let him play with a bunch of talentless hacks. 
mid he quits my team loses everything 30-0.  It would basically  mean I forfeited the #3 overall pick in the entire draft- so my team would be (out of 42 players) composed of the 13th best kid in the league (my kid- who sucks), the 24, 33 and 42 best players.  Not good bob. Not ducking  good in a 7 team league. 
mans again- I could give a fuck less if we lost every game by 30, but I want the kids to have fun. And losing by 30 isn’t fun. But neither is it likely to have fun if your parent is being man asWhole about it. And somehow they’ve all decided I’m awful. 
I will post the emails I’ve sent out. 
It’s crazy to me there’s something wrong with these fuckers. I’ve got a script for every practice. We work on fundamentals, the kids have actually gotten better over 3 practices, I’ve communicated everything with them, I’m positive and I told them all their kids will get a crack at things and have a chance in the spotlight- which they did. 
What the fuck else could you want from 1st and 2nd grade basketball?

I won 4 or 5 city league championships in 6 years on my team as a kid. Won a league mvp. Came in second on another one. I was barely in the top 20 by junior high.  One of this shit matters. None of them have a future in the game. It’s so bizarre to me. 
Maybe it’s because I played with and against 2 pga tour golfers, 2 or 3 MLB baseball players and a bunch of College players, so I know What good looks like- but seriously, these people involved in kids sports are completely fucking delusional. Which cool- go be delusional in a select league with the other nitwits. 
in- and here’s the kicker- my star player is a Hispanic kid that is seriously short/undersized. When’s the last short Hispanic kid you’ve seen in the NBA?  NCAA? Varsity high school at a legit program?  Yeah- dude- Theres no path to anything other than enjoyment in basketball with your kid. Just ducking stop. And stop with all the other shit from the other idiots. 
I was hoping this thread would be cheeky and fun like my RV thread. This was just depressing.  

[softlynow 1816]

Are you doing a team party/gathering at season’s end? If so, reverse roast. Hand out awards like most delusional parent and worst behaved parent.

Or go the opposite way and claim you sent tape to various recruiting services. “It’s never too early to start thinking ‘next Lebron!’”

[gsoda3 3262]

I've coached youth sports for almost 10 years now. You have got to stop the parents. Don't let them talk to you during the game. Don't let them talk to the refs during the game. Don't let them talk to the players during the game. Don't let them talk to you during practice. Don't let them talk to the players during practice. Make that clear and have your assistant coach or you yourself address the parents whenever they yell at them from the sidelines. You have got to stop that behavior. They have their time at home with them. Practice and games are your time.

[conVINCEd 21469]

Good luck with the parents.  I reffed youth sports in hs and college, it was a good part time job.  The parents and coaches were fucking horrible, and I earned every dollar I made.  It is my understanding that the parents and coaches have gotten worse over the years, and if that is indeed true I would have less than zero desire to participate.  Be nice to the refs, it’s not an easy job.

[RexWilson 1348]

Is there a poster on here who is a basketball official? I know there was on TOS but not sure of he made it over.

High school rules. Head coach received two quick techs and gets ejected. Does the assistant coach who becomes acting head coach have to remain seated during the game?

Spoiler alert, I was the assistant. I got hit with a tech 30 seconds in for leaving my seat. I argued the other coach's ejection should not prevent me from being in the box since I never. Regardless after he teched me I had to sit.

[Kel Varnsen 8527]

How did it go this long??? Pics of Moms.

[rtw21 20]

My understanding is that the seatbelt rule applies to the entire coaching staff once any of that team's coaches receives a technical foul.

[Wulaw Horn 19077]

So we won today, something like 38-26. 
I decided to flip my strategy for the rest of the year. My best kid is on the ball all year long half the game and the other 5 will rotate- game by game- on the ball the other half of the game. 
my he team we played against didn’t bring their best kid off the ball at all- he touched it all game long. Until the 4th quarter when he fouled out, and we finished on a 9-2 run to ice the game. 
I had a conversation with the board member at the game after the game, and the refs, and she admitted they fucked it up and they will make it a point of emphasis the rest of the year. We will see. Either it’s a rule or it isn’t, I don’t care either way,  it is the difference in about a 30 point swing at that level. 
My son played better than he ever has before. He had a shot that rolled all the way around and cruelly looked out at the very end. He’s something like 0-life in baseball and never scored in hoops- it would have been really cool if he got his first ever bucket- not to be- maybe next week. Had a couple other kids play much better which was fun to see. A good time was had by all after a rough week last week. Made it rewarding to see him happy and the other kids playing well. 

[Wulaw Horn 19077]

2-1. Another 12 or 14 point win where my best kid scored all of our points (last week we had 4 points not scored by him). Ughhhh. It’s really bumming me out. I don’t know what I should do. Scouted the best team in the league that won by a combined 78 points the first 2 games and the funny thing is we are as good as them- maybe better I think- they just actively coach their worst two kids to stand by themselves and not move while they play 3 on 3- with their best kids. 
I think we would have a chance to win the league if I had any kind of killer instinct and wanted to win the league. Maybe we will try to win in the playoffs- not sure. 
I have a new appreciation for select sports for sorting out the best players and leaving everyone else behind- it’s kinder to the kids left behind. Can’t believe I’m saying that but kinda weird. 
On a funny note- my adhd son, Who never pays attention at practice and never watched a basketball game with me at all has some pretty good instincts to the game. Setting picks at appropriate time and place, scans the court and finds the open man (I think he’s the only kid on my team who ever passes as anything other than a last resort) and plays pretty good defense when he can remember who his man is and when we are on offense vs defense. He’s pretty clearly 4th best on my team of 6, but he’s way better than the 4th best kids on the other teams. Maybe most of the thirds on the other team.  Kind of been fun to watch. He’s begging me to coach next year and I’d still really like to not be doing this job, but whatever. 

[SDG 3319]

38 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

2-1. Another 12 or 14 point win where my best kid scored all of our points (last week we had 4 points not scored by him). Ughhhh. It’s really bumming me out. I don’t know what I should do. Scouted the best team in the league that won by a combined 78 points the first 2 games and the funny thing is we are as good as them- maybe better I think- they just actively coach their worst two kids to stand by themselves and not move while they play 3 on 3- with their best kids. 
I think we would have a chance to win the league if I had any kind of killer instinct and wanted to win the league. Maybe we will try to win in the playoffs- not sure. 
I have a new appreciation for select sports for sorting out the best players and leaving everyone else behind- it’s kinder to the kids left behind. Can’t believe I’m saying that but kinda weird. 
On a funny note- my adhd son, Who never pays attention at practice and never watched a basketball game with me at all has some pretty good instincts to the game. Setting picks at appropriate time and place, scans the court and finds the open man (I think he’s the only kid on my team who ever passes as anything other than a last resort) and plays pretty good defense when he can remember who his man is and when we are on offense vs defense. He’s pretty clearly 4th best on my team of 6, but he’s way better than the 4th best kids on the other teams. Maybe most of the thirds on the other team.  Kind of been fun to watch. He’s begging me to coach next year and I’d still really like to not be doing this job, but whatever. 

Now you've seen the whole point.  You were being a good pop but are now transferring to a good proud pop.  Congratulations dude; have a beer and be happy on this Saturday.  

[Wulaw Horn 19077]

And so, it ends ignobly that I step down from the job of coaching Yute basketball with a 3-1 record and second place in the league. 
My star kids parent attempted to coach the team again from the sidelines, telling his kid to ignore me and take the ball in and do what he wanted. I took a TO and walked across the court and told him “no” And proceeded to go with the game plan of my son and the assistant coaches son being on the ball- as this was their scheduled game to shine (it was against the worst team in the league and completed my season long goal of letting every kid play every position I’m the first 4 games of the year before tightening it up and playing to win the title in the last 2 games of the year and the playoffs. 
after the game he told me- you quit or I’m holding my kid out of the league and we will quit. Ok. Cool. Do whatever. 
before I quit I asked my son- do you want to play basketball or would you rather spend 2 hours with daddy every Thursday and Saturday during the season. I couldn’t get there sentence out in full before he said- spend time with you- do other stuff. 
So, that’s cool I guess. 
told the league president what was up, he cussed the dad (known troublemaker, and told him that he had one option next year- coach or don’t enroll your kid bc he’s such a massive prick that’s caused problems in all leagues in the town with all coaches that he won’t subject anyone else to him). He was like- we can’t let this guy win and my point was if his kid quits then all the other kids on my team lose bc they are without any top end talent. 
the bitch of it is, and what really pisses me off is I told him at practice on Thursday I was taking his kid off the ball for this one game, bc it was the worst team in the league, and then we play to win the rest of the year as the rest of the kids will have all had their moment. 
he was like- you don’t know you will win if you do this and I told him- yeah- I do know. It will be an Ugly and disjointed mess of a game but there’s no way we lose, your kid will still score more points than anyone else during normal run of Play, and everything will be fine. We won 20-11. If we’d have wanted we could have won 40-5. The game and entire year has played out exactly as I scripted it. Everyone (other than my son who doesn’t care) scores on their “spotlight” game. We are second on the standings, everyone played a different position and got the opportunity to do different skill things, and now we are ready to tighten it up and play our best game the last two games of the year and try to win the league regular season and win the playoffs. 
But nope, that didn’t work. Because he’s too fucking stupid to realize that the instructions and way we are playing the kids was not designed to maximize the largest possible win in every game we had but rather give the kids their best chance to test their skills and improve. And even told him the drill. And then it played out exactly as scripted. 
All this for city league boys first and second grade basketball. In a jerk water town with no actual talent that will even play in JUCO. Utterly absurd experience. 

[PittsburghTiger 6188]

On 1/9/2021 at 7:50 PM, Wulaw Horn said:

So we lost the game and it was completely my fault. 
I got rewarded for my efforts by parents screaming at the refs causing the refs to stop the game- having my wife and mom almost get in altercations, and being heckled and screamed at by the parents on my team. 
Fun times. 
I’m trying to decide if I’m going to quit or not. I’ve forgotten more basketball than these fucksticks will ever know. When I say- it’s my fault that we lost I mean that literally. I let all of the kids take at least 4 minutes in the spotlight (32 minute game), mixed up al their positions and encouraged everyone to try something different. 
We lost by 5 (28-23) against a team that only had 5 (we have 6- they didn’t have a complete spaz mine showed up) where their 2 best players were on the ball literally 100% of the time. 
this is city league people- not select. 
Nobody should give a shit but whatever. I didn’t want this job- they begged parents to volunteer and my wife signed me up over my strenuous objections. And now everyone else can coach better. Fuck it- let them I think. 
My kid sucks. He’s better now than he was last year, but he doesn’t seem to like me coaching him (he says he does but I don’t see excitement or happiness on his face) and as much as I loved sports I’d just as soon he didn’t play because he does it in such a half assed and lackluster way that it just seems like a waste of everyone’s time. So I go out there and clap and encourage and instruct and bite my tongue as these dipshits and morons act like it’s game 7 of the nba finals. 
It is literally absurd.  

I think that letting all the kids play, and play different positions, is the best thing to do for kids. Those two kids on the other team who had the ball the whole time may stop growing at 5'9". Kids on your team may not be players now but they may grow into the game.

My way of looking at youth sports is this: The World Is Filled With Ninth Grade Football Teams That Went Undefeated, And It Doesn't Mean A Thing.

 

Edit: I didn't see your follow up posts. I think you did well. The Jagoff parent is a Jagoff.

Edited February 1, 2021 by PittsburghTiger

[Wulaw Horn 19077]

4 minutes ago, PittsburghTiger said:

 

My way of looking at youth sports is this: The World Is Filled With Ninth Grade Football Teams That Went Undefeated, And It Doesn't Mean A Thing.

That’s a great great line. 

[rtw21 20]

Coming from someone who has coached all levels of youth basketball for the past 20+ years, I hate to hear that you quit, but thank you for your efforts.  If there were more coaches like you, youth basketball (and youth sports in general) would be much better.

[Wulaw Horn 19077]

3 minutes ago, rtw21 said:

Coming from someone who has coached all levels of youth basketball for the past 20+ years, I hate to hear that you quit, but thank you for your efforts.  If there were more coaches like you, youth basketball (and youth sports in general) would be much better.

God bless you for doing this for 20 years. I couldn’t even make it one year. 
I now suspect the reason the first couple coaches passed during the tryout wasn’t talent related. I was the only guy new to town in the league. That was also the reason I didn’t want to coach because I’d never seen the league and didn’t know how it operated/what the level of seriousness was. I’ve coached at the high school level where they pay us to try to win, and I’ve coached some church league fun fair positive happy go lucky shit where they don’t keep score. Both made sense to me. I guess  it’s on me I couldn’t figure out how to make this city league thing work. I was the only guy in the league playing it the way I played it- and the other good teams won by 30 or 40 when they played the bad teams. I was the only one playing 30-20 type games and spreading the ball around and making sure everyone had a chance. Maybe that’s considered hippy commie bullshit and the play is to try to win by 50 every game when you have the other team outmatched. 
Not knowing the town or league probably had no business trying to do any of this. I’m the asshole if I’m the only one playing by a different set of rules than everyone else- and I did cause us- without a doubt- to lose our first game of the year by doing it- which probably got the whole thing off to a bad start that wasn’t overcome by keeping the throttle at 50% and winning the next 3 weeks by 8-14 when we could have won by 40. 

[rtw21 20]

No, please don't second guess yourself.  Whether the parents on your team (or others) realized it, you were coaching it the best way not only for your team, but for the teams you were playing as well.  Kids on both teams learn much less about basketball in 40-point games than they do in 10-point games, especially considering this was a 1st/2nd grade league.  I've spent over half of my coaching career with select/AAU high school teams, but even then winning was never my top priority (unless we were at a national tournament with college coaches/scouts).  Even at that level, my ultimate goal was getting the kids ready for their high school  or future college seasons.  In the end, the parents were one of the biggest reasons that led to my retirement, along with one of my players reaching the NBA, so I decided my bucket list was attained.

[Wulaw Horn 19077]

30 minutes ago, rtw21 said:

No, please don't second guess yourself.  Whether the parents on your team (or others) realized it, you were coaching it the best way not only for your team, but for the teams you were playing as well.  Kids on both teams learn much less about basketball in 40-point games than they do in 10-point games, especially considering this was a 1st/2nd grade league.  I've spent over half of my coaching career with select/AAU high school teams, but even then winning was never my top priority (unless we were at a national tournament with college coaches/scouts).  Even at that level, my ultimate goal was getting the kids ready for their high school  or future college seasons.  In the end, the parents were one of the biggest reasons that led to my retirement, along with one of my players reaching the NBA, so I decided my bucket list was attained.

Congrats on a career well spent man, that’s pretty ducking cool coaching a guy that made the league and being a part of that. 
I taught high school for a couple years and coached one- seeing one of my girls get a college scholarship (not bc of me) was pretty cool. 

[PittsburghTiger 6188]

12 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

That’s a great great line. 

And it's just true.

We all have gone to school with kids who were great stars in Pop Warner, or basketball, as 10-year olds and we also saw their idiotic parents act the fool at games. Those kids ran roughshod over everyone, when they were 10, and then never grew much past 13-years. 

I was a slightly above average baseball player as a kid. I couldn't hit to save my life but, I could stop just about anything while playing third base. I saw my friends cringe when their fathers would come to games and act like assholes. I was actually glad my dad didn't come to watch many games. I knew when he got home from the hospital that the last place he wanted to be was at the Little League fields listening to asshole parents. 

One of my brother's teammates from 9th-grade football used to score three and four TDs a game. He was great! Wait until he gets up to Varsity! He never scored a Varsity TD. He stopped growing. 

It sounds stupid, in a way, but I am of a mind that I really don't care if they keep score for such little kid games. Play, just play. Everyone should play and maybe there isn't a need for organized teams at such young ages. 

Think of how many kids quit because they are clumsy as a 12-year old who isn't used to his longer legs, or bigger feet, and because of that they get frustrated because they are not that good, yet.

[gyroprotagonist 2594]

Holy shit, there was a 1/2 grade dad that was already telling his kid to ignore the coach?  I have never experienced that thankfully, but I have never had a ringer type player either that would even come close to warrant it.

The strangest thing i had was a dad came to practice and told me his son would not working with the team today.  He would instead be running overheads around the court while we practiced because he messed up at school or something.  I think we were 2nd grade.  So we are practicing and this kid was running around the outside of the court with tears steaming out the entire time.  Thankfully left after 30 minutes, but was back the back the next practice ready to work.

Yeah, there is always 'that one kid' who you wish was not in the rotation, but it can make for some cool moments.  I had a 4th grade team where i had lost a good chunk of my team from last year so I agreed to merge with the remnants of a team  that had folded but still had 3 kids that wanted to play together.  Skill-wise i got a good big, a timid small and a kid that was legit special in some way.  Load noises really bothered him and he had probably had a 1st grader's hand-eye coordination and could not run but sorta shuffled quickly. 

League had sub rules where everyone played at least half the game, so had to get the line up just right to compensate because we played m2m D exclusively.  Anyway, fast forward through to the end of 4th grade season and I seriously considered asking the other coach to let him just get a shot up in the last game, like a make-a-wish type deal, but held off.  In the 5th grade season he had improved quite a bit (he did try hard in practice) and when he finally scored a bucket in a game the whole team went crazy and celebrated like we just won game 7 of the finals.  it was really cool to see.  

[Covri 6249]

On 12/3/2020 at 5:14 PM, Pancho said:

Don't over analyze and just let them run around and explore the game.  They'll start to understand.

Shut down the rabid parents.  Let them know the kids are too young and are just learning.  None of them are LeBron. 

I don't ref little dribblers anymore, but when I did it was fun.  I rarely called traveling (even though the kids practically never dribbled) and just called a foul here and there to make sure each kid had a chance to shoot a FT (if I could).  I would also call a foul and stop and explain why I did it and then give them a high five. 

* I don't have kids.  I ref. 

 

[Tylerocks 2553]

Kudos to you Wulaw...I've enjoyed following your experience.  It's a shame how things like this are often times ruined by the adults.

I mean, fucking 1st grade basketball...no matter what, is not serious business.  

It's a shame too because those kids need a coach like you at that age..teaching fundamentals, rotating positions etc.  It sounded like a great plan.

 

Any way..congrats on making it through.  F that one dad and I hope you and your son find something else to do together.

 

 

[Trick Britches 40]

I’m currently coaching my son’s team (9 and 10 year’s old).  We’ve been a middling team, but we beat the best team in the league a few days ago so I thought we had “turned the corner”, but we just lost to another middling team...frustrating.   Win or lose, I find that I don’t sleep well hahaha.  It was good finding this thread - I know this isn’t life changing stuff, and it can be a big time commitment, but I’ve enjoyed it.