I was decent. Good enough to where one of Depaul's Assistant coaches thought enough to inquire about me after watching us scrimmage the City All Star team prior to them playing at Malcolm X or Kennedy King that year.

Had I stuck with it I could have played somewhere in college. One of the guys that was on our High School staff actually wanted to place a call on my behalf down to the college that I eventually attended and I told him no because I was just done. The politics were what turned me off more than anything. Wasn't about merit. You can accept that but when it is about things not related to merit then that's troublesome.

Funny because four years after graduating from High School I ended up being a colleague of my former High School coach. Put all that stuff aside and we were good. One of my guys from High School said he spoke with our coach a few months ago and he still remembered the little outburst from back in the day.

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I'm going to bounce from the spot for awhile but I will be back at some point to argue with you about this hoops stuff again. Playoffs have been great this season. See ya up the road.

I'm out.

You played during the era of T-Ball and Peach Basket however. That doesn't count.

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There is some value with a kid learning to deal with a coach who is a jerk but it is a shame how many coaches don't seem to understand how ineffective they are because of it.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Many don't understand there's very little time for instruction(practice) and when kids come to practice and just want to pull their pud, it irritates coaches. Practices are just like classrooms. If a kid acts up or doesn't pay attention in a classroom, is the teacher a jerk and "reliving her glory days" by kicking a kid out of the classroom? Teachers get 5 days a week and hours of instruction. They can be patient. Coaches don't have that luxury. THAT is why they get curt, they don't have the time. They can't give kids' homework, they can't tell the kids' moms to work with Joey on his leadoffs because he's falling behind.

I've always told my own kids that practice is the coaches' time. You are the student, he is the teacher. Pay attention. Do the work. You do that, 99% of the time you won't have a problem with any coach, even the jerkoffs.

I run a pretty tight ship at practice and have very little tolerance for non-sense, but I manage to never yell or go off on a kid. Just calmly but firmly tell them to get with the program or sit out.

It's youth sports. Who cares if it only runs at 80% efficiency?

Treat the kids with respect.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Some guys seem to think that is what constitutes coaching. See it all the time. The maniacal behavior and the histrionics. Some of the coaches (though very good) have even been disciplined because of their sideline antics.

About 10 years ago or so there was a big deal over paddling and corporal punishment. One of my good friends got swept up in and eventually was terminated over it. Ruined his life.

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I think it was the Bobby Knight influence. I wonder if modern day coaches will want to be Steve Kerr and just kind of sit there and congratulate.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Yeah I think the era of the hard nosed ball coach might be over. Even the guys that portray that image now are pretty tame compared to the guys of previous eras.

You can sort of blame (I guess) social media for that also. It's too easy to be recorded these days. Even practice. Guys don't want to take that chance.

It's gotten to a point where cursing at kids is considered a no no.

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I didn't want to put my kids on travel teams because it's way to much time, money, and effort. But I had to because they wanted to be good and play with other kids who wanted to be good. They knew pulling their puds at practice and having embarrassing play in games wasn't fun. THEY knew, not me.

I understand putting your kids in travel because they want to improve but the point is that it is still youth sports and there is no reason to make life hell for the kids so your practice runs with as little downtime as possible. If it means that your kids lose in the semi-finals of a tournament in Youngstown, OH then hopefully one day the kids can overcome that crushing memory.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

It wasn't hell. They enjoyed the spirited competition. I didn't. It was a pain in the ass but it isn't about me.

I think we are arguing parameters. There's disciplined activity, there's let's have fun at all times, and there's military boot camp.

I think having fun at all times is worthless. I think military boot camp is counterproductive.

I'm talking about coaches that are always yelling and acting like jerks and it makes the whole thing a joyless grind.

I get that expectations are higher for people who do traveling teams but it still should be a positive activity for a kid rather than the youth equivalent of a job you don't like going to.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

That's all subjective. I felt it was equivalent of a job, kids didn't. You're take is your take and you are allowed to judge what's a worthwhile activity for your own kids.

I can judge if it is worthwhile for other kids too. It's not like there is some special situation that makes a weekend spent in Hershey, PA playing a sport hoping for that college scholarship any different when it's another kid doing it.

It's not me bashing the parents either. I'm sure I'll do a lot of things that are mostly wastes of time and money too.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

LMAO

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Some waste money on travel sports others on a Purdue education. It is all relative

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

There is certainly truth to that.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

What is worthwhile is what the kid and not the adult, garners from it. If the kid believes that he is getting something out of it then that is all that really matters. Some kids want to play competitive sports and there is nothing wrong with that if that is what they are into. What I find to be much worse is when the adult pushes their kids to play competitive sports and the kid has no interest.

That is what's detrimental. I have friends that berate their kids in public worse than any coach ever could. They actively go out of their way to humiliate their kid it seems. They think that it makes them tougher and more competitive. I don't see it but maybe I am missing something.

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I've been out of the state once. There are plenty of travel leagues within the Chicagoland area. What people in this thread have done is pontificate to the extreme. I don't know anybody going to Hershey, PA, causing havoc with their kids while looking for a college scholarship. But if you have seen that consistently, then i respect that POV. But that wasn't my reality.

I'm not really talking about the local youth sports all star teams that play other local teams. There is a huge industry based on around teams traveling all over the place and playing all weekend in random towns like that.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

We’ve always had good coaches. I am actually surprised how they keep their cool in situations where officials make a terrible call or a kid dogs it on a play.

I’ve never coached because I would not be able to control my competitiveness. It took me years just to be a decent parent at games. And to this day, I still mumble under my breath when a high school kid can’t throw to first or travels for the third time in a game.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Last year, semi-final game of our playoffs. Tie game. My daughter pitching, looking for the 3rd out to complete 3 scoreless innings. Runner on 2nd. Grounder to 3b. 3B hesitates, then throws it 15 feet over 1b head. Runner on 2nd scores.

We tied it in the next inning but lost in extras.

It was hard to not go nuts in that situation. But it's also on me, Im the one who put the 3b at third.

Attending the same small public school K-12 never had to deal with tryouts or not making the team. In football, most everybody played both sides/special teams until 9th grade, when we got an influx of students from other smaller schools.

Working on an SAP implementation at a purveyor of HFCS beverages and salty snacks with a HQ in the w loop a few years back I'm stationed next to our dept head/the VP of a couple of floors worth of ee's and lowly contractors like me. One day we come back from lunch and VP dude gets on the phone. He's maybe 6 feet from me, against the window, where they put the important people. He proceeds to spend the next had to be 90 minutes to 2 hours alternatively trying to bully, beg, cajole, guilt ("my son needs this right now"), bribe the coach of his son's baseball team into putting his son on the travel team ("bring your wife into the city and we'll meet up at Gibson's for dinner on me" he even proffered covering a room at the hotel over the SunTimes for them, Holiday Inn?) . Anyhow, as far as I could pick up, da coach on the other end kept saying the same thing in different ways, "your son's not even good enough to get playing time on the non-travel team, no way I can put him on the travel team. wouldn't be fair to the other kids/parents." Ended up feeling sorry for the VP dude by the end.

Kid’s sports politics is something to behold. There was a window there where no matter where you went social or otherwise you couldn’t escape it. Someone always bitching about something. I always felt it was wrong the way smaller suburban schools set up their triumviate of parents/coaches/booster structure all socializing partying etc together.

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Elections have consequences.