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Parents – Don’t Be A Red Flag

As a follow-up to our recent podcast with Danielle McNamara on why grades matter for college recruiting, she has given us permission to reprint her recent newsletter article. If your child wants to play college tennis, I encourage you to sign up for her College Tennis Recruiting Newsletter – she shares very valuable advice in each installment through the eyes of her role as the former Head Coach at Yale Women’s Tennis and her current role as Sports Parent. 

How to Avoid Jeopardizing Your Child’s Recruitment

The “inspiration” for today’s post is a U12 soccer tournament I recently attended with my daughter during which parent behavior was even more of an issue than it normally is.  I don’t claim to be a perfect parent – having to separate what the coach in me would say from what the mom in me needs to say has been a major challenge as my own children have become more serious athletes.  But there are certain parent behaviors that I’m attuned to because of how often I’d see them on the recruiting trail.  Below are some of the ways parents can create red flags that could cause coaches to take a pass on recruiting their sons or daughters.

Dominating the Recruiting Process

As a coach, anytime I spoke with a recruit and her parents I would be very aware of who was doing most of the talking.  Recruit = good sign.  Her parents = bad sign.  For coaches, recruiting is about much more than results on court.  It’s about getting to know the person who you’ll be spending hundreds and hundreds of hours with over the course of four years.  How will this person affect team chemistry?  Is he or she the type of person people want to be around on a six-hour bus ride after a tough loss?  It’s impossible to answer these questions if the recruit isn’t saying much of anything.

Oftentimes parents feel the need to do a lot of the talking because their sons or daughters aren’t speaking up.  One of the ways parents can be most helpful during the recruiting process is by helping to prepare their children to take the lead.  Before a conversation with a coach, go over the questions your child intends to ask.  Have them practice answering some of the questions the coach is likely to ask.  Let your child know that when the conversation takes place, you’ll be letting him or her do most of the talking.

None of the above is intended to suggest that parents need to keep totally silent during the recruiting process.  Just like the coach is going to be spending hundreds and hundreds of hours with your son or daughter, your son or daughter is going to be spending hundreds and hundreds of hours with the coach.  You want to feel good about the person you’re entrusting your child to.  So by all means ask questions.  Just make sure that you’re not the one asking or answering most of the questions.

Coaching from the Stands

As previously discussed, when coaches come to watch your son or daughter play, they’re not just observing the actual points being played.  They’re taking it all in.  That includes what you’re up to as the parent.

A parent coaching from the stands raises several potential questions I would ask myself when recruiting an athlete.  “Is this parent going to try to coach from the stands during our college matches and maybe tell their daughter something different than what I’m saying as her coach?”  “Is this player so reliant on coaching from her parent that she will feel lost without it?”  “Is excessive coaching from the parent making the player hate tennis such that I have to worry about the player quitting in a year or two?”

Offering words of encouragement during a match is totally fine.  Trying to coach your child from the stands isn’t.

Demonstrating Poor Sportsmanship

Parents who are bad sports create two potential headaches for coaches.  First, it is unlikely that the parents’ poor sportsmanship will disappear when their children get to college, so coaches know they’ll be dealing with that on the sidelines for four years.  More importantly, there is the risk that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree and the player models his or her behavior after the parents.  Now there’s a sportsmanship problem on the team itself.

And the poor sportsmanship doesn’t need to be of the totally outrageous, screaming-expletives-at-officials variety to create a red flag.  Even things like bad-mouthing officials or opponents after a match when you think nobody is listening can indicate a potential problem.

All of the behaviors discussed above are important to avoid from a recruiting perspective.  But even more importantly, they are things that can harm your relationship with your child and your child’s love of tennis.  I’ve been in coaching long enough to have witnessed far too many families affected by these problems.  Again, I don’t claim to be a perfect parent.  But watching these dynamics from a coach’s perspective has made me very aware of the need to be mindful of them as a parent.

 

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