Reply To: Help with Parents

[Gregg Whitfield]

Do you think the parents would have emailed if the kid wasn't complaining? Who really needs convincing? On my peewee A team I started the season with 6 players volunteering to play D and I have worked hard with them to build their capabilities. I had a couple changes but mainly the same players for the first half of the season.

Two weeks ago, I rotated all 5 D to F, and replaced them with the 5 forwards I felt were most ready to play the position. This was a mid-season change designed to expose as many kids as I could to playing defense and giving them half a season to become proficient. In the recent change, I had an issue with one player who absolutely did not want anything to do with this. He is a pretty skilled and heady F who had never played D before, a natural choice as far as I was concerned. However, he was very upset at being chosen, considering it a demotion, irritated that he wasn't going to be scoring goals (nobody scores, we average 1 goal a game) and worried he was going to get beat constantly.

I tried hard to communicate to him that I did not consider it a demotion at all, but actually an investment in his future, to become that vaulable, well-rounded player who was capable of doing anything the coach needed. The parents could see the sense in my choosing him (the dad is a coach himself) so that wasn't a real concern but your parents also seem to be reasonable. Could they only be complaining on behalf of their son? Anyway, I wore him down a bit with the positives, told him it didn't have to be forever if he REALLY hated it. He grudgingly agreed to give it a try and played the first two games very well and the smiles are slowly returning on his face.

On top of that, our team has experienced a sudden burst of scoring, potting 7 in our last game. I'm making sure to show him of the contribution he's making to his team, as I have always told them that "Great offense begins with the Defense". I got a few extra smiles when I compared him to Kris Letang (we live in Pittsburgh) since that's kind of how he plays defense and he's got the long hair to boot. We'll see how it goes long term. Good luck to you as well.