This article by Bruce E. Brown, from the Proactive Coaching "Parents and Coaches Working Together" collection, is the first in a series on the parent's role in athletics, drawn from excerpts of the booklet and DVD of the same name. Based on 35 years of coaching and decades of athlete feedback, it explains how parents and coaches are attempting to teach the same life lessons, and shares athletes' own answers about what parents do during games that makes them feel good.
Introduction
Excerpts from the booklet – The Parent's Role in Athletics – and from the DVD – The Parent's Role in Athletics.
The involvement of parents in the athletic experience of their children is a given. Without question, all parents should be part of this area of potential growth. But it is often a larger responsibility than realized. Their involvement affects their own child, the coach, the rest of the team, the other parents and the officials. How they choose to be involved often will become the reflective memories their son or daughter have of the whole athletic experience.