Why Sports Parenting is So Damned Hard

Pre-order the Soccer Dad by David Murray here.

There are two essential ways of being a soccer dad.

There’s the soccer dad shark, who’s constantly scouring, evaluating, and trying to manipulate the travel-soccer scene to create the perfectly optimal path for his kid, and bringing maniacal energy to the process.

He’s always seeking a better club, a more prestigious showcase tournament to attend, a more in-the-know coach to talk to, a better software program for creating college highlight reels, inevitably causing his daughter to wonder, on some days, whether he cares a little bit more about her soccer than she does. (And yes, there are moms like this, too—not as common, but in my limited experience, just as obnoxious. I saw only one parent get a red card; it was a mom.)

And then there’s the laissez-faire soccer dad—like me—who upon his first encounter with the disorienting complexity and wacked-out values of the youth soccer system, throws his hands up and proceeds in complacent faith that if his kid is good enough and wants it bad enough, it’ll all work out for her in the end. He is mutteringly self-righteous in his disdain for the “soccer nuts” among the other parents, and despite making an equal investment of time and money, he’s proud of the relative emotional detachment he has carefully cultivated.

(And yes, there are moms like this, too; one we knew frequently sat under a tree during games, doing yoga or playing a guitar.)

After our girls were off to college, I told one of the soccer moms that of all the other parents we spent time with over the years, I thought there was only one of us who handled the soccer job.

Without hesitation, she said, “John Lillig?”

John was exceptional, on the sideline and off.

On:

Travel-soccer sidelines bring out the phony, prideful, preening, falsely humble, whiny, know-it-all worst in pretty much every parent. There’s more positioning and posturing among the parents on the sideline than the players on the pitch. (The aggression is usually passive, but I once saw two dads get into a fistfight after a game; their kids played on the same team.)

Which is why John always took in the action from his favorite spot, on a far corner of the field, exactly as far away from the other parents as he could possibly get. He would greet all of us warmly before the game and rejoin us at halftime and afterward. But during play, he was down there by the offensive team’s corner flag. He once explained to me why: He didn’t want to listen to what the parents were saying about the game, the players, or the referees—any of the parents, including himself.

Off:

John’s more important wisdom was the perfect balance that he seemed to strike between the two sketchy soccer dad types. Of each, John brought to bear the best and avoided the worst, gently but firmly and quietly but purposefully guiding his kids’ soccer careers.

John figured out how to become simultaneously knowledgeable about the system and calmly thoughtful in his approach. And that’s how you become a great soccer parent, it seems to me.

But it’s hard as hell! You have to know all the clubs in your area, and all the talent levels of their teams. If your kid has ideas about playing in college, you have to know which kinds of college coaches attend which kinds of regional and national showcase tournaments. You have to maintain a realistic idea of how good your kid is (and who your kid is), and where the kid would be happiest playing—now, and in college.

And you have to do all that while standing coolly back, like John did, and not starting to steer.

In the roiling belly of the travel-sports industrial complex, it is easy for kids to get confused about why they’re doing this: for themselves, for their parents, for their demanding coaches—or just because they’ve always done it and it’s all they really know and it’s what they think they are. Making sure that doesn’t happen is a really difficult job. To the extent that you fail to do that job, you fail to properly parent your soccer child. And I say that as someone who failed plenty—and I say it to someone who will fail sometimes, too.

Parents who unfold their new canvas camping chairs on their first sports sideline thinking this is the “fun” part of being a dad or mom will be surprised by how much work it is.

And honestly, how hard it is to do right.

Pre-order the Soccer Dad by David Murray here.