24 HOUR RULE

24 HOUR RULE- by Randy Paries


Parents are the same all over it seems. As a coach if it was not
for parents, coaching youth would be perfect, but some times parents
make you feel it is not worth it.   I have a couple of suggestions. 
I am by no means an expert, but this year has been the best as far 
as parents have been concerned. Here are a couple of things that our
association and I did. Our Association incorporated a 24hr rule. 
Parents were not allowed to talk to the coach until 24hrs after the 
game about concerns/complaints. This one seemed to help alot. I don't 
know about you but if someone comes and jumps on me right after a game, 
I still have the adrenaline going strong and it can get ugly fast.
 
A couple of times a particular parent was screaming mad, but by waiting
24 hrs they cooled off and we had a calm discussion. Sometimes after the
24 hours they don't even bother.Some thing else I have found as very 
important is a team meeting at the beginning of the year. In this meeting,
I tell those parents the following things:
· What I expect of the players.
· What I expect of the parents.
· My philosophy on playing time and game situations.
· My philosophy on practices.
· My philosophy on player behavior and sportsmanship.

This year I had two meetings, one with just the parents and one with just
my players. This way everyone knows where you are coming from and knows what
to expect. One other thing I did that saved my hide was getting the most 
problem family involved. In a coaches clinic I was in they had made this 
suggestion. What one team did was give parents assignments during games to
keep stats. I tried this but it failed, nobody would volunteer to do it. 
One thing that worked very well for me was, I took the dad (who was 
very vocal about his dislike for me the year before) and his wife and asked
him to help me on the ice during practices.  This turned out great, and actually,
he stood up to his wife a couple of times for me. This stuff all helped, but it
was far from perfect. I think it is impossible to be involved in competitive
hockey and not have parent problems.


 ParentsGuide To Youth Hockey  Added 9/4/00
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