Last week I was cleaning up the kitchen when I looked at my phone only to discover this email from a parent on my team:

Hi Coach,

We wanted to send this email to share our thoughts on a couple things.

For starters, thank you so much for being willing to coach kids basketball this year. We know it takes a lot of time on your part and we are very grateful. We had the opportunity to coach and didn’t feel we were knowledgeable enough about the sport, so we are very grateful for people like you who are.

We also want to bring some concerns to your attention. Almost half the team is comprised of 3^rd grade boys, and after speaking with 4 of the families, I know they are all frustrated with not having an opportunity to touch the ball during the games. They never get passed to, and they aren’t given the opportunity to bring the ball in, so their only opportunity to touch the ball is if by some chance (as the shortest kids on the court) they are able to get a rebound. We realize a lot of this you aren’t able to control. We just don’t want all these 3^rd graders to lose their love of basketball and not want to play next year. We know you are paying attention to so many things during the game setting, and we know you want every kid to have a good experience. So we thought we would just bring this to your attention in case you hadn’t noticed. And with that we have a couple suggestions…

*maybe only have the 3^rd graders bring the ball in when it’s our ball. This way they are guaranteed to at least touch the ball once during the games.

*maybe put all the third graders out together during a shift…this would give them the opportunity to work together and get touches on the ball.

These are just a couple ideas we thought of, and maybe you have some other great ideas. With three games left we just really want these kids to have an equal opportunity to participate in the game setting. Thank you so much for your time.

For a little background, I make sure to play all the kids an equal amount of time, or as equal as possible when I have my full roster of 11 players present. In the first game I played my son Parker the least so that it didn’t look like I was playing favorites. That being said I have run into a situation where all of the third graders on my team suck, once in a while you get a younger kid who is a generational talent and can hang with the older kids or, in the rare instance, excel past the older kids. However, it isn’t a third and fourth grade thing, it’s a you’re good or you’re not good thing. Some of the fourth graders, my son included, aren’t very good. There are two kids who have what it takes to consistently put the ball in the basket, at the fourth grade level that’s one out of ten times they shoot. I didn’t respond to the emailer, instead on Saturday I had all of the third graders start the game together. There are five of them so it worked out perfectly. 5 minutes into the game when it was time to sub them out we were down 6-0 and had taken zero shots. In real basketball it was like being down 20-0 after five minutes of play. I pulled the third graders but for one (because two of my fourth graders were missing) and we were able to claw our way back into the game. I have two point guards and one of them was missing so I tried to keep my one point guard in as much as possible. He fired up more shots than James Harden does in a typical night but he kept us in it until the very end of the game. However, with 50 seconds left and our team leading by a point he fired up a shot instead of pulling it back and draining the clock. Granted, I could have called a timeout, but I’m not doing that, this is 3rd/4th grade youth league basketball. Ultimately, the other team scored and my point guard ended up throwing up an unanswered prayer as time expired.

To say my point guard is a head case, is like saying Dennis Rodman was eccentric, this kid is me as an adult, he hates losing and blames everyone else when it happens (although I have a hard time blaming other people when I am losing in singles tennis). After the game when I was trying to calm him down the refs (who were teenage girls) informed me that my point guard had done a double barrel bird flip to the other team. Prior to being informed of his misstep I was telling him that he needed to stop being such head case and that he had played well. His response “I played well, my teammates didn’t. While his point was valid, it was still a poor attitude and a sign that he may be this way for the rest of his playing career unless there is a dramatic change. 

On Monday as I was getting ready to close out my day and head home I was treated to a second email from a parent, although this parent wanted to remain anonymous and used a burner email account:

Hello. 

There are a few things I am hoping to address with you before the game this weekend. 

I will keep my sons name anonymous as he is good friends with Cornelius (not his real name, but I put that in there to protect his anonymity)

We were sitting down by the hoop on the far side of the gym and during the last 5 minutes of the game, we heard Corny shouting some very upsetting things to his teammates and someone on the sideline (im assuming that was his mother) about his team. He had shouted “its not my fault my team sucks” and then he yelled at another player for losing the player he was supposed to guard. My son said the teammate he yelled at was Adrian or Adriana (not his real name either) ? He isnt completely sure which one he goes by. He also said that Corny wore an old jersey which was the same number as Adrian ( im going to call him Adrian because my son said its Ade or Adrian for sure) and it was confusing who was supposed to guard someone as the other teams players were either both on Corny or both Adrian. 

Then, at the end of the game, he clear as day, flipped off the other team before walking off the court. Not only did myself, my wife see this, but so did parents of kids from the other team. It was a very embarrassing moment. To hear the other team say they are thankful they will not have to play our team again because of one childs attitude is heartbreaking (there is no way any kid on the other team made mention of how glad they were they didn’t have to play us again because of my point guards antics). Your coaching came up by other parents wondering why you allow Corny to play as he is CONSTANTLY throwing fits on the court and cutting down players/his own team and calling fouls when that is NOT his place. He also yelled out last game that “its not my fault i have to do everything on this team” (He does, including shoot way too much)

My son also said a couple of weeks ago, a player on their team fell and hit his head and was sitting out for a good part of the game and began crying (it was Adrian) because it hurt and he overheard Corny tell him to grow up and stop being a baby. This is NOT how you treat your teammates. I dont know about that game as i was not able to attend. I am just going by what my child told me and i fully believe him. (yeah I believe all the stuff my kid tells me too, what a loser)

Now, i understand they are all children, but as i have stated, my son is good friends with him (if Corny is so reprehensible why does this dipshit allow his kid to be friends with him?) but also stated he never wants to be on the same team as him and if he could, he would quit this team now because its no longer enjoyable when you have to play with someone like that. He has also stated he isnt the only older boy on the team that feels that way and other younger ones feel the same.  

I dont care how good a child is, as soon as they start acting like that during a game or practice, they should be benched immediately. 

I know you cannot hear/see everything that is happening on the court, thats why i feel it is necessary to bring up to you because those actions do unfortunately fall back on you as a coach by how other teams look at it and it isnt fair when its not something you may see or hear. 

Maybe sportsmanship is something that needs to be brought up at practice tonight.

I signed up to coach only because I wanted to give Parker a chance to play in the Caledonia youth league. Had I known what a truly miserable experience it would be I definitely would have told Parker tough luck there wasn’t a roster spot for him. Being a criminal defense attorney is stressful enough, I don’t need to have added drama in my life as a result of coaching 3rd and 4th grade basketball. (I already create more drama than a normal person could take with my confrontational personality) On top of all of this, I ran into a coach that I had coached against the previous week in the MVP locker room. I was reading the email about 3rd graders to my buddy after we had played pickle ball and the guy overheard me and said “hey, you sound familiar”. We began talking about youth sports and he asked me if I ran any plays. I told him I tried in practice but my players have the memory Shirley’s grandma and when I tried to run the play in a scrimmage it was like they hadn’t even been there to learn the actual play. This guys’ team runs two plays, and they had scouted one of their opponents. It’s parents like the ones who decided to send me emails, and coaches like that guy, that have youth sports on the wrong trajectory. Granted, Corny’s mom isn’t doing him any favors (when I use the name Corny instead of his real name he seems a lot more harmless, maybe that should be his punishment for his behavior, his mom should change his name to Cornelius) I sent Corny’s mom the email from the anonymous (ball less parent) and she denied most of his behavior. She also sent an apology email to the parents on the team that significantly minimized his abhorrent behavior. (I admit it was terrible behavior, but the kid can ball!)

Granted, back when I was growing up, we didn’t have email. So, parents couldn’t go all passive aggressive with the protection of an electronic form of communication, where there would be no real time response. If you had a problem with the coach you had to talk to the coach. Now parents can just fire off emails with few consequences and the threat of absolutely no actual face to face conflict. Had any of these parents had the kohonas to actually speak to me in person I guarantee it would not have ended well for them. 

Where do I go from here? How do I extrapolate myself from the situation while inflicting the most collateral damage? Well, this weekend I picked up a roast from Costco, it was a beautiful hunk of meat that I was looking forward to eating on Sunday. However, since it was so nice out Shirley suggested I smoke a pork shoulder. So, the next opportunity to have the roast was last night. Shirley works from home and I reminded her to get the roast in. I headed to pickle ball and as I was leaving I noticed a text from Shirley “I had to run to the outlet mall to pick up clothes for the conference that I am going to” my response was “that’s funny I could have sworn you had clothes in your closet when I left this morning, were they all stolen?” Regardless when I got home I went to work on making mashed potatoes and Brussel sprouts to go with the delicious roast that was in the oven. When Shirley got home she pulled the roast out of the oven only to discover it was still raw, she had put the roast in the wrong oven, or in the alternative she had turned on the wrong oven, take your pick. Sitting here looking back at it I now realize the solution to my problem, hand over the coaching reins to Shirley. Problem solved!