Parents Out of Control

I was sitting with one of my granddaughters last week, watching one of her siblings play basketball. Behind us was a dad who yelled at his son the entire game. He was mostly encouraging, but called constantly to his son to give him tips and encourage him to “take it to the rim.” This dad never let up. He yelled The. Entire. Game.

The week before, I had been at a different game, again involving a grandchild. It wasn’t a particularly pretty game. The officials were doing a good job, stopping for teaching moments along the way. I happen to know both officials quite well. They are good men and were taking their Saturday mornings to help out. It would have been impossible to call every foul and whistle every infraction. We would have been there all day.

Sometime late in the game, the coach for one team was absolutely certain that his best player had been fouled. He screamed and gestured in a manner that would have made Bobby Knight proud. I didn’t know him from Adam but I was embarrassed.

Last week I worked a high school basketball game. It was highly competitive and came down to a last second shot but along the way, the visiting team was hit with 5 technical fouls, their best player was ejected, and one of their fans was escorted from the gym.

Here’s what I observed—their students, fans, parents, and school staff members spent the entire game screaming at the officials and the home team. Yelling obscenities, making hand gestures, and generally being out of control. No one should be surprised that the players on the court demonstrated such bad behavior. They were surrounded by it.

At some time, school administrators for that school should have stepped in and taken control of the student section. They didn’t. For all I know, they were part of it. I actually saw a teacher join the students at one point. Adults should know better.

Most of my sideline work is at football and baseball, where you are insulated from the comments of parents and fans. I will have a hard time if I eventually retire—I won’t be able to sit in the stands. When (not if) somebody says something about somebody’s kid or one of the coaches…well…I’m not sure what I will do but it won’t be pretty.

That dad needs to let his kid play. He needs to let him be coached and be part of the team. His kid was really good but that is no excuse. After the game, I saw the kid sobbing uncontrollably. I can only speculate why.

That coach needs to just calm down. He will find as he gets older (and wiser) that it isn’t that important. He will find that it’s far more important for his kids to develop motor skills, to learn how to be a good teammate, to understand what it is to be coachable.

He was probably the dad of one of the players on the team. I know it is hard to find coaches. Heck, the first full soccer game I saw, I coached. They for sure couldn’t find anyone better. But best case scenario is for a non-parent to coach those teams. Yeah, I know how hard, if not impossible, that is.

Do your job as a parent. Show love. Teach. Encourage. Support. Wipe the tears. Don’t make excuses nor allow excuses. Your child’s future depends on it. In life and in athletics.

One More Chat

I don’t want this to seem dark and gloomy. I want it to be something else entirely. But some life experiences this week caused me to think of my dad, who died in 1997.

Maybe it was the family gathered for Thanksgiving. Maybe it was when I sat with a dad that had just lost his son. I spent some time with my own son and that was part of it. Maybe that’s just the way these things work.

My dad was a simple man. He dropped out of school after the 6^th grade to go to work in a factory to support his family after his own dad had died. Think about that. Can you imagine sending your 12 year old off to work?

He was 16 when the Great Depression hit in 1929. Work was scarce so he moved from his hometown of Sweetwater to Knoxville, where he had a single room in the basement of a building and worked at jobs whenever he could find them.

He married my mom in 1941 and was the “old guy” at 30 in his Navy unit when he went off to war in 1943, serving in the south Pacific on the USS New Jersey. After the war, he moved to Loudon and got a job at the hosiery mill there. When a new factory opened, he moved there for better opportunities.

He had his first heart attack at age 45, and was forced into retirement ten years later. My summer job all through college was at that same factory. It was hot, nasty work but it paid well.

What I heard from those guys at that factory that had worked with my dad was that Carl Black was a hard worker. They told me that he always seemed to be going 100 miles per hour…that he often did the job of two people and looked for more.

He raised bees and strawberries, always had a huge garden, and each fall would help local farmers kill hogs to get some of the meat. He was always tinkering in his workshop and seemed to be able to fix anything. He was proud of his ice cream freezer, home-made and one of the first in our neighborhood to run off an electric motor. I was never hungry and I was never cold.

I guess I got my work ethic from him. I’m pretty sure I got my ambition from him. Not attending college wasn’t an option for me. I’ve wondered aloud how that came to be. I now realize it was probably from my dad, who never had that opportunity.

He was a little man, 5’6” and 145 pounds at his biggest. Sports were never an option for him but he became my biggest supporter in whatever I did. Because of his heart problems, he could never attend my football games. Doctors decided it was too much excitement for him. But I know he was always sitting at home alone, listening to the radio broadcast of my games.

Because of the blood thinners he took for almost half his life, he was always cold. He loved the hottest days of summer when he was finally comfortable. The last good memories I have of him are sitting with him in church and putting my always warm hands on his cold hands, then napping in the afternoon with him in the apartment he and my mom shared. He was gone the next day.

Like everyone, I would like one more visit with my dad, one more time to talk to him. I don’t have to think hard to know what I would say. I would tell him about the wondrous things that his grandchildren have done and introduce him to my own grandchildren. I would tell him about my life since his death. I know he would be proud that I went back to school and got my doctorate. Being able to call me Dr. Joe Black would have been his proudest moment.

But I would have only one question for him. “Dad, did I do OK?” Hug on somebody today.