For my parents out there, I would strongly encourage parents to definitely be involved with your daughter’s decision making process, with her evaluation process of different colleges and universities out there. On the high school level, I think that parents, it is very important that you are able to talk to your daughter about her experiences, about what she likes, what she does not like, what she can do a little bit better.
Try to get her as much help and support as she needs as she goes through this process from middle school, to high school and then into college. I will be honest and tell you that as a college coach, I watch parents and I watched their behavior on the sidelines and I watch how they interact with their daughter. I watch how they interact with the college coaches, club coaches, and high school coaches and unfortunately, when I have a parent who is screaming at the coach or screaming at teammates or screaming at her daughter, there is a lot of negative energy, a lot of negativity around, I make note of that, and that is something bad, quite frankly, I do know that we appreciate in our program or that we want to be around and I think it is important for parents to recognize that enthusiastic support of your daughter is one thing. But destructive, negative behavior towards officials, towards other coaches, towards other teams, that is something that sometimes you get caught up in the moment. I understand, but you definitely want to be mindful of that and I think that as coaches, we definitely are aware or we take the time to watch parents and how they interact with their players and their programs.
I do think for parents, it is important that you understand that you have every right to introduce yourself to college coaches, to get to know college coaches, to ask questions of college coaches especially on your daughter’s behalf. But I think for the most part, you want to have your daughter do the communication with the college coach. When it comes down to time to make decisions, it is vital that the parents are involved. I would be wary of any coach who wants to ask your daughter to make a decision, whether to a scholarship, whether it is on the admission spot, whether it is on “do you want to be here at the school? Do you want to give me a verbal commitment” without having the parents involved.
I think that, that is a serious red flag and I think the parents have every right to be involved and present at those types of meetings and in those interactions and I would not hesitate to pick up the phone and call a college coach and ask questions, and if they are not willing to interact with you, that probably tells you something. But again, I think it is give and take on both sides which is extremely important to understand.
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