PARENTS SIDELINE BEHAVIOR*

Dear Parents:

When working with youth players, one of the most difficult things for a player to do is play while being yelled at from the sidelines by a parent, spectator or fan.  Professional players are paid a LOT on money and one of the “sacrifices” they make in return for this is they are subjected to this type of yelling from the stands on a regular basis.  However, when we are dealing with youth players, they are not prepared to handle much of the yelling that occurs from the sidelines and they should not be subjected to this yelling either.

It’s natural for a parent to want to cheer for their son or daughter and that is perfectly acceptable but anything more than cheering actually can become a problem.  For example, the player might be told to “go wide” as an outside midfielder in certain situations, and because a parent has heard a coach yell, “get wide” the parents thinks this is an acceptable thing to do.  The problem is that there are only certain situations when the player should get wide and other times when he or she should stay toward the middle.  The only way for the player to understand this is by letting them try things and sometimes it will work which they can learn from and other times it will not work which they can also learn from.  If they are being yelled at to do something from the sideline, are they really learning?  Also, how much worse is it if they are being yelled at to do the wrong thing?

How may times have you heard a spectator yell to “kick it” or “boot it” when in reality the team would like to maintain possession?  How may times have you heard spectators yelling at the ref and then you notice that the players start to do the same thing because it’s what others are doing?

It’s truly a sad thing when after a game a player is crying and when you ask them why they are crying they respond, “Because the parents were yelling at me”.  I wish I could say this never happens or rarely happens but with young players, it happens a lot more than it should.

If you are a parent, give some thought to whether you are acting in a positive or negative way on the sidelines.  As a coach, how often do you meet with the parents and let them know what is expected of them on the sidelines?  It’s something that needs to be done early in a season to prevent this type of thing from happening and it becoming a problem within the team.




* taken from "Fair Play" magazine, a publication of the USSF