Parental Involvement with Athletes and Coaches - By Amilee Jimenez

Description: Filling the shoes as a coach in high school and beyond comes with many factors. Parental contact is a big major role when it comes to athletes, coaches, and parents. Learn more about parental involvement in this article by Amilee Jimenez.

Parental Involvement with Athletes and Coaches

By Amilee Jimenez

Filling the shoes as a coach in high school and beyond comes with many factors. Parental contact is a big major role when it comes to athletes, coaches, and parents.

Parental involvement is very much beneficial. La Junta High School Football coach Drew Sisson stated that parental involvement can increase an athlete's chances of getting more playing time, by discussing where the athlete stands when it comes to their strengths and techniques. When parents are willing to openly communicate and talk about what an athlete needs to improve more on, even the athletes that put out the most effort and are coachable are being recognized for their hard work and dedication.Coach Justin Samora  mentioned that some parents' involvement in their childrens’ sports is beneficial. Parents help their children by sending them to camps or technicians to work more on their skills. Frontiers Research shows how parent involvement encourages better social skills and helps players work better with others, as a team. When positive parental involvement happens, the motivation, behavior, and performance of the athlete increases. 

While parent engagement can be effective to players because they engage with a coach on which position and or more playing time the athlete should be equipped to do, excessive parental engagement can cause stress and discomfort in the athlete. Parental engagement can also lead to highly unsettling and hard-to-ignore phenomena, such as conditional respect and off-field anger. According to Frontiers Research, when it comes to conditional respect athletes have a tendency to act out in a way of being disrespectful, dishonest, and less communicative, all of which can then lead to off-field anger with being overwhelmed and stressed causing a burst of anger built up.   Parents can cause a lack of motivation in the athlete if they engage in their career or love for the sport negatively, causing athletes to fall out of liking the sport.

Understanding the way coaches coach like they do is beneficial for parental involvement because it allows parents and athletes to get a better understanding of the expectations, as it can allow athletes to work on what they need to improve. Coaches spend nearly 10 hours weekly watching film, evaluating athletes, and creating game plans for the following week. As a coach, it's important to be tough and know the standard for the way the program should go. Coaches have an expected standard when it comes to becoming successful such as sticking to the plan and being consistent. Coaches build relations with the players by being consistent, and having open communication. The skills required to be successful with techniques as both a coach and athlete is being outgoing, disciplined, and organized on and off the field or court. Athletes that put out effort and dedication allow coaches to become familiar with the technique, which allows them to coach in a successful way. All athletes are held to the same standards because they have the technique to come out with a good mindset and toughness for the win. Tips for parents to work effectively with athletes and coaches include supporting the decision-making, primarily showing respect, being willing to help correct mistakes when needed, and being interested in the learning process.

More Tigers' Tale Content:

Share

Tweet

Follow SECO News on Facebook.
Subscribe to the SECO News YouTube Channel.