One Sports Mom’s Success Story: Dealing with a Bully Coach

Communicating With a Bully Coach

Sports parents often feel torn about how to deal with difficult or bully coaches. Parents worry that if they approach coaches about their behavior, the coaches will give their kids less playing time, bench them, or favor other players.

But parents need to overcome these fears and step forward. After all, coaches are only human. That’s what Kim, a sports mom, discovered after she took our advice and (bravely) reached out to a coach to discuss how he was undermining her 11-year-old baseball player’s confidence, and not realizing it.

In an interview, Kim told us that her son, a pitcher for his team, felt embarrassed when the coach degraded or yelled at him.

“The coach, as a way to motivate him, would embarrass him in front of his team mates,” says Kim. ‘The coach would yell at him, ‘It’s simple baseball boys, what’s wrong with you?’ He would pull him from the game and replace him, reducing him to tears.”

Her son responded the way most kids respond when humiliated. The boy’s confidence sunk and he stated to fear making mistakes.

“It deflated his confidence he was simply unable to perform. He was floundering, too afraid to make a decision or move. He was too intimidated to just go for it,” Kim says.

As we’ve said many times, when kids are too scared to take risks, their performance really suffers. They generally play to avoid making mistakes, which doesn’t allow them to grow as players.

In this case, it got so bad that Kim pulled her son from the team for three games of the season. But it didn’t feel good to Kim or to her son for him to walk away from a position of leadership, she says.

“We had to have some resolutions. We couldn’t just take our ball and go home,” she says.

That’s when Kim contacted us for advice, and we suggested she try to talk to the coach. Keep in mind that when we suggest this, we say that parents need to be careful about how they do this.

Parents should not approach coaches when they’re coaching, and they should not approach them in front of the players. Parents need to be civil and avoid blaming or insulting the coach.

That’s just what Kim did.

“I sent him an email. I thought this was the most innocuous, least confrontational way to approach him. I said, ‘As a coach, your job is to get the most out of your players.’” 

She offered to explain to him how to get the most out of her son—by encouraging him and giving him positive feedback.

And guess what? The coach listened. He told Kim he had never coached kids this young before. He told her that it’s his job to understand what motivates each kid.

He said he had noticed that if he yelled, her son would shrink back. He even offered to work one-on-one in the park with Kim and her son on the skills the boy needed to improve. Kim accepted his offer.

When Kim’s son returned to the team—after meeting privately with the coach for a few weeks—he actually achieved a record number of strike-outs.

“Our first game back on the team – after myself, my son and the coach had met and had gotten through our problem – he struck out 10 players in a row – a record on our travel team.  It was living, breathing proof that if you encourage my son and have a positive attitude, he will rise to the occasion,” she wrote us.

To listen to the first half of the interview with Kim, use the player below:

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Related Articles on Youth Sports:

• College Sports and Bully Coaches: Rutgers’ Rice Fired
• Sports Mom Fights Bully Coach and Changes the System
• Should Parents Try to Reason with Bully Coaches?

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