Dear Coach,
I know how much time you have invested in this team, and I do appreciate it. You should be commended for spending 90 minutes five days a week with a gaggle of teen girls. It must be miserably difficult, like wrangling feral cats on a sugar high after they’ve been caged for the whole day. You must go home needing a drink every day. Vodka must call your name. In that alone, you have earned the coach’s gift ten times over.
I know about the after school practices five days a week. It happens that I chauffeur my kid to and from those practices. The only difference, I don’t get paid to do it. I actually paid half a kidney for my kid to play. After I spent the half a kidney’s profits on the “school athletic fee” I then spent the rest of the kidney on the incidentals for my kid to be part of the team. I had to buy, at a minimum, 2 pairs of volley ball shorts (which should be considered high way robbery) and knee pads and a practice volley ball and the secret player snacks and a coach’s gift.
Here is the thing coach, this is junior high volleyball. The volleyball team isn’t curing cancer. They aren’t being scouted by colleges. These girls are 8th and 9th graders playing volleyball. I know you want to win. We all want to win. No one likes to lose. I haven’t met anyone, ever, who said “Let’s go out there and lose!” Sometimes though, by focusing so intently on the goal, you lose sight of the big picture.
All of these girls tried out for the team. They all were good enough to be picked. They should all be good enough to play more than 2 minutes in the final game. I understand that some girls are better than others. I know that relatively some of these kids suck. But when they sit on the bench of 98% of the game, you crush their spirits.
When my kid asks you, “What can I do to get more game time?” Your response, “Everyone will get to play, just some will play more than others”, was a crappy answer. Repeating your answer doesn’t make it any less crappy. I was expecting something like, “learn how to serve” or maybe “you should go home and do 100 of those silly exercises after practice” or even “suck less”. I thought after pointing this out to you before game 2, you’d be a little more sensitive to the 4 girls who sat on the bench the for 98% of game 1, only playing the last 5 minutes when all hope was lost or our win was secured. You weren’t. They spent game 3 and 4 only playing the last game after we’ve already lost. I though that you’d be more aware of the situation when McKayla told you she was thinking about conducting a study on which school had the most comfortable benches because she was spending so much time sitting on them. You weren’t. The little group of benchwarmers spent 95% of the games on the bench during games 5, 6, and 7. I thought that things would turn around when we’d lost so many games that it was impossible to win the season. I thought it would turn from trying to win, to having fun. It didn’t though. They spent games 8 and 9 on the bench too. I thought that after someone’s dad yelled “WHY ISN’T EVERYONE GETTING TO PLAY” numerous times during game 9, you’d let them play a majority of the last game. You didn’t.
I felt bad for McKayla. I especially felt bad because her siblings and I came to every game, only missing one. Sometimes the drive was 20 minutes away. In the beginning we came with posters and snacks. By the last game we were packing books and toys and crochet supplies because we knew there wouldn’t be any cheering on our favorite player. How demoralizing, knowing you have a cheering section who takes up a whole bleacher but you won’t be doing any playing for them to cheer.
I’m sure you don’t have any kids yet, but let me tell you something about childhood sports, sometimes it can be torturous for us parents. We drive back and forth to practices multiple times a week. Often the practices aren’t long enough for us to do anything productive, so we’re stuck in the car reading, entertaining, bribing our other children. We come to the games because we’re obligated. We’re supporting our kids because we love them, but there are lots more interesting things I could be doing. Even when our kid is amazing (and I have one of those) we don’t wake up thinking “YES! I get to go to a little league game today! I’m so lucky! I wish we could watch two games today!”
I’ve never seen an adult follow children’s sports, I’ve never met anyone in the stands of a junior high volleyball game who wasn’t related to a kid on the team. Heck, there are rarely teens in the stands, let alone parents. So when you see us every week, you should throw me a bone. Put my kid in. Let her play. She might suck. She might miss every ball, every ball she serves might come up short, but I still want to see her play. I’m still going to cheer her on in hopes that she doesn’t suck. And some days, those 2 minutes she plays are the best two minutes of the whole game. She hits every ball, they rally, they volley, they are amazing, this group of benchwarmers. Maybe it’s because she’s my kid, maybe it’s because I like the underdog, or maybe it’s because they really want to prove themselves to you.
Next year, you should find out whose parents are in the stands, and put them in. Let them play. Because most people are working during the week from 3:30-6, you should take a poll. If you’re mom comes, you’re guaranteed 25% playing time. If you’re dad comes 50%. Let the drive and 90 minutes of spectating be worth it. Please.
Sincerely,
The benchwarmer’s mom
Overactiveovaries 