Whose game is it?
Once appreciated, or at least respected, area high school coaches find that they’re now on an uneven playing field where an unhappy parent or two can oust them.
By Kevin Mills
Staff Writer

The team celebrates its regional championship in the middle of the field. Fans storm across the turf, frantic to join in the jubilation.

A little way off, the opposing coach watches and mutters sourly, “What a bunch of hypocrites!”

Long before those players began their march to a state championship, their coach had been fired. Many of the same parents, now ecstatic with the thrill of victory, had spearheaded the movement to oust him. Only the protests of the team itself saved the coach’s job, and likely the season.

After all, parents have become major players on the high school sports scene.

“There are some horror stories out there,” said Andrew Dolloff, principal at Scarborough High School, who previously coached boys’ basketball at Dirigo and Lewiston. “You don’t know what’s going on at the dinner table. That’s where a lot of coaches get in trouble, and they’re not there to defend themselves.”

Dolloff is concerned that “if a student goes home from practice or a game and they’re making disrespectful comments about that coach, whether it’s about the coach’s philosophy, the strategy or how they select kids for playing time, the kids start to buy into some of that. Then there are discussions among parents and among players. The respect now for the coach, the authority that he or she has, starts to erode.”

More and more, the real contests are between coaches and parents, rather than on the field. To some degree, it really isn’t a new phenomenon, but it has approached a whole new level, and the consequences are widespread. It has created an adversarial climate at the high school sports level.

These conflicts are often bitter and quite public. Often, they result in coaches leaving the job, and athletes paying the price. And then the question is, who will be willing to coach kids in the future?

Whose game is it anyway?

“I think it will probably get a little worse before it will get better,” said Val Brown, former girls’ basketball and soccer coach at Edward Little and Oxford Hills. “I just think it has to come to a standstill and people say, ‘What is going on? Why is this getting to this point? Why is it becoming such an issue when the focus should be the kids?’ Because it takes away from the kids. I’ve seen kids come into my room crying because the parents are getting involved, and the kids don’t want them involved. They don’t have control over their parents. They’re not able to control what their parents do.”

With all the pressures in coaching high school sports, area coaches say that dealing with parents can be the most daunting.

Obviously, this isn’t all parents. Many are valued volunteers who help keep the programs running. But, pitted against the irate minority of parents, a coach may have little protection.

The climate has shown that if a parent wants a coach out, it isn’t hard to make it happen. Even the most successful coach can be smeared, criticized and threatened to the point of leaving. Many have reached the point where they decide it isn’t worth the fight. While parents and athletes are protected against coaches who get out of control, there’s not much security for high school coaches themselves.

“If there’s an influential parent that wants to get rid of me, it wouldn’t take them any time at all,” said Dave Morin, EL boys’ soccer coach and Leavitt baseball coach. “It doesn’t matter whether you coach 25 years or three years. That’s sad.”

It’s left coaches and schools on the defensive, hoping to avoid problems or scrambling to find ways to solve them.

“In my perspective now as an athletic director, that’s the thing I fear most, that someone is going to come after one of my coaches and that there’s nothing that I can do,” said Carl Parker, former Bangor High boys’ basketball coach and current athletic director at Nokomis.

Teaching sportsmanship

Many coaches have been forced out. Others are leaving, fearing similar repercussions, or just plain tired of the struggle. That leaves schools struggling, not only to find quality candidates but any candidates at all.

“It’s really, really hard to coach now,” said Craig Jipson, a multi-sport coach at Oxford Hills. “Parents are becoming more involved and demanding. We’re seeing great people getting pushed out of coaching because of a lot of things.”

Incidents are increasing annually. A coach’s property gets terrorized. Parents threaten to hire lawyers over a conflict. When one coach fell seriously ill, parents began plotting to replace him, even before knowing whether or not he’d survive. Coaches have received full support from principals and athletic administrators – only to be fired by a school board with less-than-objective parents, or friends of parents, casting the decisive votes. Recently, one coach was hired, only to resign after another candidate’s supporters tried to circumvent the process and force their own agenda on the school and program.

In the last year, Cape Elizabeth’s Jim Ray almost was forced out because the superintendent of schools wanted him gone. Bonny Eagle’s T.J. Hesler was challenged and eventually ousted for scolding a player about poor sportsmanship.

“T.J. Hesler gets nailed because one of his kids dunks the ball and goes by and lifts his shirt up in disrespect to the other team,” said former Winthrop girls’ basketball coach Ray Convery. “He tells that kid that it’s wrong. My father would have kicked my rear end. The parent comes back on him for that? That’s the absurdity about it.”

And, Convery says, today coaches get challenged a lot more about how they use players.

“People never used to be concerned about that. Everybody wanted their child to play, but (now) they challenge your decisions on what you run for an offense or defense. That you don’t do things right. They feel you don’t know what you’re doing after 300-something wins and 20-something years of coaching.

“Look at all the top-notch coaches that are getting nailed. If somebody doesn’t like the way you speak to a child now, they want you fired. If a child comes home and says, ‘He yelled and screamed at me, or did this or that,’ they’re right in the superintendent’s office.”

Down by the scream and shout

There are the high-profile incidents, but also many more subversive actions. Parents calculate every minute their child plays. They wait to argue playing time immediately after the game. Some don’t confront the coach but complain behind his or her back. It has become a climate where parents scream now and ask questions later.

“You could see it coming,” said Dave Morin, longtime soccer coach at Edward Little and baseball coach at Leavitt. “I started out in hockey, and those parents were pretty tough. I got real close to a few, and it wound up being a mistake for me. All of a sudden, someone you’re close to, their kid isn’t playing and you never speak again.

“They’ve taken it too far. It’s high school sports! Seventy-five percent of these kids won’t be doing this after high school. Another 99 percent are done after college, and it’s become recreation for them. They should learn to enjoy it because it’s a phase of their life, something they can look back in a positive light when they get older. Sooner or later, something will happen and people will say it has to stop, but it will take a while.”

Nationally, this behavior became headline news when a fight between hockey parents in Massachusetts resulted in death. Incidents like that can be shrugged off as extreme, rare occurrences unlikely to happen in Maine. Still, there was a brawl over a youth hockey tournament in Lewiston a few years ago, and another incident at a middle school soccer game where a parent punched an official.

It is a scenario that wouldn’t be tolerated in any other climate but athletics.

“How many parents would like us to come in only twice a week and for an hour-and-a-half sit back and watch them work,” said Morin. “Then leave and make comments about what they do? That’s basically what they do, and they really don’t know anything (about what you’re trying to do).”

‘Tainting’ the athletes

Bob Bigelow, a former NBA player and scout, says many problems that high school coaches are seeing today started in youth sports, which for some is an opportunity for parental misconduct and treatment of their athletes and coaches.

He co-authored “Just Let the Kids Play,” which chronicles how adults are ruining the fun and success of youth sports. He says that when adults place winning above all else, their behavior can escalate to the out-of-control antics and violence seen today.

“Adults are overly invested, overly zealous, overly stressed,” says Bigelow. “It all comes back to the same thing. Adults have taken an increasingly active role in their children’s sports, sometimes to the point of manipulation.”

It’s become a clash in philosophies, he says. Youth sports fan the flames of egos, unrealistic expectations and obsessions with scholarships and college applications. There comes a sense of entitlement and pressure on parents to build their own self-esteem through their children. Bigelow says they can overlook the perversion of the process. What started as something to delight and motivate children has become something for the sake of the parents.

In his book, Bigelow quotes William F. Gaine, deputy director of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, who says athletes reach high school tainted because of expectations stemming from their preceding athletic experiences.

“In my opinion, the norm that has been defined in the sports culture is contrary to the mission of interscholastic athletics,” said Gaine. “We are fighting a battle that almost can’t be won.”

Sean McCann, a Portland native and currently a sports psychologist with the United States Olympic team, witnessed an incident at the games in Salt Lake City last year. A female skier from the United States team was minutes away from starting her race. An all-access photographer sat down in front of her with a large zoom lens pointed toward her face and began snapping photos. McCann quickly had the photographer removed, only to be told that he was just trying to get some pictures requested by the skier’s father.

“The fact is that parents are so involved in their children’s lives that they can’t step back and see the big picture,” said Oxford Hills Athletic Director Jeff Benson. “Sometimes it becomes a very narrow focus.

The vanishing teacher-coach

Of course, parental problems existed in the past. But they certainly weren’t like what is seen today. Some incidents have become public spectacles.

“You’d communicate with the kids,” said Dolloff. “The kids communicated with you, and that’s where it was left. You left it in the gym.”

Another problem is most coaches used to teach and coach in the same building, but that’s been a hard standard to hold. Dolloff says Scarborough has tried to raise the percentage of coaches who are in the school system by hiring teachers who can bring extracurricular ability to the school system, and it’s made a difference.

“When teachers get involved with kids beyond the regular school day, the atmosphere in this building changes tremendously, because now kids and adults are interacting in a completely different format,” said Dolloff. “There’s a level or respect that you don’t always just get from a teacher and student.”

Certainly not all parents are like those who earn the moniker “Sideline Saddams.” There are many who participate in booster clubs. They volunteer to help coach, keep statistics, run clocks, run concession stands and find other positive ways to accompany and support their athletes.

“I think the majority of parents are still excellent,” said Bob Fallon, a veteran coach of basketball and football. “I think there are some frustrations, and I think there are some legitimate frustrations, and there are some obviously not-legitimate frustrations.”

When Morin’s sons were playing soccer at Maranacook, they’d often mention conflicts they had. He suggested they handle the situations themselves. He would also hear from fellow parents. Since he was a coach in another district, they encouraged him to get involved, but Morin refused.

“People would expect me to stick my nose in, whether I agreed or not with what the coaches were doing,” said Morin. “I knew how difficult the job was. I’d always get asked, ‘What do you think?’ I’d say what I think doesn’t matter. Our boys on the team have to believe in what the coach is putting across. My team has to believe in the system that I’m trying to teach them. If somebody’s out there sabotaging what I’m trying to do, you don’t have a chance.”

It may be a difficult task to lure parents away from their high expectations, but it must be done. Keeping parents informed and in the proper frame of mind is vital.

“The biggest thing is communication and education,” said Benson. “You want to make sure that you do everything you can, from the athletic director’s point of view to the coaches’, and you hope the coaches can communicate that to the parents and players. The second thing is education. They need to tell people that we all have certain roles. Sometimes we need to step back and let people do those roles and do their jobs.”

Good things in threes

Fallon likens the parent-coach-athlete relationship to a triangle.

“At the apex is the athlete, and at each corner of the base is the foundation of that athletic success,” said Fallon. “On one corner is the coach, and on the other corner is the parent. If any of that gets broken down, that athlete is going to have trouble succeeding. I think if the three of them work together, then I think the athlete is going to have what I consider success.”

He defines success as the athletes “having a positive experience that 20 years from now they’re not going to forget.”

Developing rapport with the athletes helps a coach-player relationship flourish. In it, each side can talk about their goals and expectations.

“I always felt we had a tremendous line of communication,” said Convery. “The kids could talk to me about things. We headed off a lot of problems by taking care of them ahead of time and not waiting until it got to be a problem.”

Sometimes coaches take a defensive posture with parents, hoping to stay away from any conflicts. It is the more open relationship that can lead to greater understanding.

“Parents at times can be an adversary, but that doesn’t mean that all of them are,” said Parker. “If that’s what you believe, you have to somehow win them over.”

Benson says he always asks parents if their child knows that they’re complaining to a coach. He also asks whether the complaint is their problem or their child’s.

Because parents are more inclined to get involved, athletes won’t bother to handle issues themselves. If parents hold athletes accountable for their own problems, the player and coach can resolve most issues, the coaches say.

“I think there’s a point in time at the high school level where they’re becoming young adults,” said Brown. “What I hope is that what you’ve taught them as they’ve grown up and what their teacher and coaches teach them while they’re here will teach them to be responsible young adults and help them make good decisions and be able to speak for themselves and learn to confront issues, work together with other people and be responsible for their own lives.”

Mingling with a purpose

The variety of incidents in recent years has caught some schools off guard, but administrations are trying to find ways to not only handle a crisis but find ways to prevent one.

During the season, Parker, the former basketball coach who’s now an athletic director, will make sure he’s around the parents at games and also visible in the community.

“I mingle with the crowd,” said Parker, speaking at a coaches clinic at the Central Maine Technical College. “I’m for the most part accepted in the community. They respect the experience that I have. The coaches are comfortable with me. I try to coach (the parents), so to speak. So when there’s that controversy, that question with a lot of them, they’ll ask me and it never gets to the level where they’re infuriated.”

Sometimes issues certainly warrant a parent’s involvement or even the athletic director’s participation. Many schools learn from each other’s problems.

“I have found in nine years in administration that if you can get the adults together, we’ll find some common ground and leave the room with some understanding of where we’re headed,” Parker said.

When Parker was faced with a petition started by a mother out to have girls’ basketball coach Earl Anderson fired, Parker and Anderson met with all the parents who signed the petition and appeased all of them, except the mother that started the crisis. Prior to that, Parker had made it clear that if Anderson lost his job, he’d leave his.

“I told the principal, ‘If Earl is done. I’m done, too,'” said Parker. “I told the superintendent the same thing. Call it stubborn or stupid, I don’t know which it is…. But I truly believe it’s important, from my perspective, that we stand with our coaches.”

Coaches may sometimes feel that they don’t have much support from their administrations, and that if a problem arose, they’d be doomed. Parker says some of the problems have festered because administrations have handled things poorly, allowing situations to get out of hand.

“I really believe that there are not enough in administration – because they’re comfortable in their job, they make good money in their job and they don’t want to uproot their children and their family – that will take a stand,” said Parker. “Until administrations take a stand, we will continue to see the things that we’re seeing.”

Dolloff admits, as a former coach, he’d be tempted to side with a coach in a dispute. He knows coaches would hope for and expect backing from the school. Still, in his job he has to listen to a complaint and determine its legitimacy. He says there are times when a coach may be backed publicly but advised privately to avoid similar problems in the future.

The 10-year plan

In some places, “Silent Sunday” or “Silent Saturday” has been established to keep parents quiet during youth league events. Could high school sports be far behind in trying such strategies of desperation?

“I’d hate to see something like that,” said Dolloff. “I don’t see us going that way right now. People put in rules like that because something has gotten out of control, because somebody hasn’t dealt with it. If you allow things to happen, then you have to make a rule.”

Still, coaching casualties are everywhere. Will this school season be any different?

Convery says the fact that that climate is still so intense, especially in youth sports and club teams, that those issues will still continue to follow athletes to high school.

“It’s going to get worse,” said Convery. “Parents spend a lot of time with their kids. They’re willing to go to bat for them a lot more, even though sometimes it might be better to let the child go through the experiences themselves and learn to be a little mentally tougher. I don’t see it getting better.”

Morin says it won’t be the current coaches, parents or administrators that solve the parental problems. It will be the athletes of today who eventually recognize the chaos that they grew up amidst and right it on their own.

“That’s when it will change, with this generation,” said Morin. “They’re the ones that know what it’s like. They’ve internalized it. They’ll become parents, and they’ll have kids and they’ll change it. It will probably take 10 years.”

kmills@sunjournal.com

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