Communication Would Help Coaches Avoid Parent Trap

It has become one of the favorite cliches of Orange County coaches: “In my next life, I want to coach at an orphanage.”

Are parents of high school athletes really that unbearable? Is dealing with them so awful? The way some coaches moan and groan, you’d think they were dealing with auditors from the IRS instead of moms and dads.

It is that perception--parents as necessary evil--that prompted Larry Lovenduski to call. Lovenduski, an Irvine father of two, says he’s tired of reading about coaches who complain about parents, as if parents were the cause of every problem. Sure, some parents get out of control, Lovenduski says. But many of the others, he believes, are getting a bum rap.

“Coaches say, ‘Oh, woe is me. Poor me. I’m getting victimized by these crazy parents,’ ” Larry says. “But how many coaches actually sit down and seriously consider the parents’ point of view? They put up this fortress mentality. Would it be so bad if they just listened?”

We told Larry we weren’t inclined to agree, that we had seen enough cases of parents gone berserk to wonder why anyone would coach high school sports in the first place. Then again, no harm in hearing another opinion.

A little background: Lovenduski, 44, works in commodity trading. His son, a senior baseball player, and daughter, a freshman involved in track and soccer, attend Woodbridge High. He says his outlook isn’t derived solely from the situation at Woodbridge; he’s generally in tune with high school athletics around Orange County. So his view, he believes, reflects a fairly wide perspective.

It is Lovenduski’s opinion that parent-coach conflicts are only going to get worse, thanks to the growing emphasis on college scholarships as well as the pervasive feeling among baby boomers that, as a 1990s parent, you have not only the right but a duty to get involved in your child’s welfare.

“I have a fundamental problem watching these young coaches rant and rave about overprotective parents when, as parents, all we’re told by teachers and principals is, ‘We need your input. We’re only as good as parent involvement allows us to be. Let’s do Open House, blah, blah, blah,’ ” Lovenduski says. “As parents, we’re conditioned to interact, to get involved.

“And then what happens? A coach turns around and says, ‘Get out of my hair. I’m a professional, I know what I’m doing.’ ”

The answer, Lovenduski says, is focus groups. That’s right, straight out of Marketing 101.

Coaches are under the impression they don’t have to answer to anyone, he says. That’s an illusion--and the basis of their fortress mentality. If coaches were to realize, as smart business people do, that they have a client base to protect, they might see how important it is to facilitate understanding. Otherwise conflicts occur, feelings get hurt, athletes transfer or quit the team or end up in far less productive activities.

“Focus groups. User groups,” Lovenduski says. “They’re basic tools of business. If a coach sat down with a sample group of parents to clearly define what the expectations are--How long will practices last? How much money will we need to raise? What do you consider appropriate disciplinary behavior? Ethical behavior?--then when problems come up, at least he’ll have an understanding of where everybody’s coming from.

“But they are not market focused. They don’t even see these families and kids as their market and that’s a mistake. If you’re trying to sell somebody a piece of software, and your customer complains, you don’t say, ‘Get off my back. I know what I’m doing.’ You’d be out of business.”

Lovenduski says he understands coaches are underpaid and probably cringe at the thought of spending additional time away from the game, especially if it’s for the sake of soothing riled parents. But the initial investment, he believes, would be worth it in the end.

“Nobody is asking the coaches to give up their autonomy or professional judgment,” Lovenduski says. “If as a coach, you want to play one kid over another or whatever, that’s your decision. But you have to understand that’s a sensitive thing for a parent to (accept).

“Coaches need to understand what they do doesn’t happen in a vacuum. If they find a way to facilitate communication, if they can just pick up the phone instead of just saying, ‘Leave me alone. I’m a professional,’ it sensitizes the parents to, ‘Oh, this is more than a cap and a whistle I’m talking to.’ ”

Lovenduski admits his views on this subject are a tad idealistic, or in his words, “touchy-feely.” But things are not the way they were 20 or even 10 years ago, he says. Parents today are told continually to stay involved, lest their kids drift into self-defeating patterns. “There’s a psychic stake today, so much more than before,” he says. Lovenduski doesn’t think he is the only parent in Orange County who feels this way.

Perhaps he should form his own focus group to find out.