One of striking features of sports in America is the role of coach and the importance it gives to them along with players (sometimes even more than them) unlike other countries where players are the key and coaches though well known & respected are not above the player who plays the game. However at a lower level (kids sports), the role of coach is at best, functionary, and not really a coach. Be it swimming where the coaches 99% of the time just make you do drills over drills with no emphasis on stroke, breathing etc (heck coaches don’t even get into water!), or soccer whose primary duty on field is to avoid kids hurting each other rather than teaching kids about strategy, passings, assists etc or even volleyball where coaches take no serious effort to do 1:1 coaching. The “coach” is just an official and it would be nice if they just called them officials instead of “coach” cos coaching is the last thing they do.
And yet when it comes to group placements in any sport, the coaches yield an inordinate amount of power over your kid inspite of doing very little themselves. Its no wonder then that as long as you as a parent are willing to kiss their asses and be pally-pally with them, your kid is well taken care of. Its no wonder then we have a generation of helicopter parents who know more than the coach and will go out of way to push their kids, and i feel them now. At some level i feel like I have let down my own kid because I’ve always believed in staying out of it and let her shine through. But its now clear to me that it is actually working against her, and I need to butt in as parent even if I am not interested in doing this so that she gets a chance. Its wrong IMO to do this, but here we are. Because all we have are lousy officials carrying the “coach” moniker and thinking more of themselves than they really are.