My oldest daughter played on one of those competitive youth teams that travelled all over the place.
Do you know much about those club teams?
They are filled with drama--and only some of it is instigated by the youth. A lot of it comes from the parents and the coaches.
For a while, she had one of those asshole coaches who was trying to relive his glory days through a bunch of twelve year old girls. We stayed with the team because she liked the players, and we liked the parents.
Then came Abby or Princess as she was eventually nicknamed. She was the coach's golden girl. She was a fairly decent player--not that much better than most of the other players--but pretty good. The coach, for some reason, obsessed over this girl. She could do no wrong. The parents saw it. The players saw it. Heck, the opposition probably saw it.
As you can imagine, eventually there was a meltdown. We're talking Chernobyl level stuff here. Oh, the emails and the phone calls and the threats and the tears! We had to DO SOMETHING. We couldn't just let this favoritism continue. Finally, we were all asked to talk to our daughters to see if they felt that Abby was indeed the coach's favorite and what they wanted us to do about it.
So I asked, and my daughter answered.
"Of course, Abby is his favorite, but what has that got to do with me? That's not going to effect the way I play or how I feel about this team."
Well, I was impressed. It was a pretty mature answer for a twelve year old.
So I reported her answer back to the parent pack.
One mom--that one mom on every team whose daughter isn't very good, but she thinks she's the next Alex Morgan--responded with her voice all tight and teary, "Well, of course your daughter would say that. She's so secure in herself."
BINGO! I couldn't have said it better myself.
And that is why I am working on Wednesday.
