Overly obsessive parents in sports

Read that title as 'overly obese parents'.

Am I alone here?

There's always the 9-10 yr olds who show up with $500.00 worth of new gear and strike out every at bat.

Anyone who has a kid in sports has seen these parents. It's pretty sad.

2 years ago I coached 5/6 girls softball rec league. We were lucky if we could get all the girls in the field to face home place. There was one girl who was decent. Probably 3rd best kid on the team. She played first base.

Fourth game of the season, a kid hit a ball to the pitcher. her kid was playing first and the pitcher bounced the ball about 5 times on the throw to first, which was about 10 feet wide of the bag. The MOTHER starts screaming from the stands about her she's done watching her daughter play with a bunch of &^#$*( LOSERS, comes onto the field, grabs her daughter, tells her very loudly "I will find you a team that doesn't suck!" and pulls her off the field. We never saw them again. The kid was crying, then all my other kids in the field start crying.

Horrific.

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At least the kids know who their dad is?

I have been a high school and middle school coach for the past 10 years. In all honesty I find that most of these parents mean well, they are just a bit overbearing and annoying.

The parents I dislike the most are the ones who fall in love with their kids "trainer" or "personal coach" and begin telling the kid to ignore the us in so many words. Those, and the parents who "use to" coach.

I remember losing one of our best athletes one year because he broke his foot listening to dad and "coach". Apparently they decided the kid wasn't tired enough when he left practice and took it upon themselves to run the kid ragged after. Eventually he developed a fracture in his foot and had to be shut down.

The same guy was trying to recruit another one of our athletes to train with him, I walked straight over, interrupted the conversation and told the parent that if the kid trained with him that I wouldn't coach them.

I have seen parents show up to coaches houses at 6:00 in the morning on the weekend to talk about playing time, I have seen parents try (and succeed) to bribe coaches with money and items. Several moms have tried to flirt to get their kid some extra attention. I have seen a few parents brawl in the stands and in the parking lot.

If you coach long enough you pick up some great stories. I love bullshitting with the older coaches and listening to them tell stories. That's the same reason I laugh when people talk about how the poor public schools can't compete.