Drilling The Point Home

On Friday I got a call from my niece with a two part question: would I take her to basketball practice the next day and would I wear my Rajon Rondo shirt when I did? Now, even though I could not do the second half of that request because I do not own a Rajon Rondo jersey (it goes against my policy of owning jerseys of players who are younger than me, which is why I have not bought a new jersey in years (though I thought about doing it in this case)), I was more than happy to do the second part. Not only was it a little one-on-one time with my niece which is always good, I also enjoy these little portals into parenthood because I like to find out what the deal is without having to actually have the life-long commitment of raising another human being. I was especially interested in this particular event because I figure sports (especially basketball) would be right up my alley and I wanted to see if this league would be as full of parents gone wild as I had been lead to believe. My niece is just starting to play organized (and I do use that term loosely) sports but if any number of documentaries or disturbing news clips are to be believed first-grade intramural basketball is more than organized enough to be filled with parents who are screaming at coaches for not having their kids working on the right drills as well as at the kids for not being attentive enough during those poorly-chosen drills. Watching ESPN I have been lead to think every parent is banking on a scholarship for free college tuition and figure the only way they are getting that is if their kid dominates from the very start, so I was ready for anything. Turns out I didn't have anything to worry about.

First off, any illusions that this was for kids who were serious about getting good at basketball were quickly dashed when I saw just how many little girls were in this league. There were 5 teams divided by color and roughly 12 girls on every team, which meant there was no chance for individual coaching. What happened was each team went to one drill area, worked on that one drill for 8 minutes and then the buzzer sounded and they all ran to the next drill area. [Sidebar: "Run to the next drill" may have been the thing my niece was best at, because she was always first in line at the next station.] Also, it was like most organized events I have been to regarding small children in the last few years, which is to say that only about 30 of the girls actually wanted to be there and were paying close enough attention to learn anything. The rest of the girls were clearly just signed up by a parent and would rather being doing anything else, which meant they were killing time by playing with each other's hair, dancing in place, staring off into the distance or covering their ears because the buzzer was scheduled to go off in just under three minutes and they didn't want to be caught off-guard. Getting these girls into lines and getting them to go through the drill was so time-consuming every girl only got one or two turns at each station, which isn't exactly going to turn them into the next Diana Taurasi. Also, it is hard to really know how good a person is at basketball when little things like dribbling, travelling and only playing with one ball at a time never come in to the equation.

So it was pretty clear that even if a parent started off the season thinking this was going to be hardcore training by the time I showed up they knew not to expect this to be a well-oiled machine, which is how it should be. That being said, in some ways the behavior of the parents was disappointing. Don't get me wrong - I was happy that there weren't any helicopter parents trying to take over the show (the biggest douche of the day was the one dad who seemed to want credit for repeatedly dunking an under-inflated ball on an eight-foot rim) but it seemed like most of them went too far the other way and didn't care at all. I swear, the fastest some of them moved all day was to rush to grab a seat in the line of folding chairs on the sideline, immediately take out their phone and never look up again until practice was over, totally content to let the coaches do whatever they wanted as long as their kid didn't lose a limb in the next hour. I was one of the few people who moved every time my niece changed stations so that I could keep an eye on her and she could see that I was actually interested in how she was doing, which surprised me. I was expecting more enthusiasm. I don't want any parent to be the one who challenges the other parents to a fistfight because their kids fouled one another but I don't think this extremely laid-back approach is the answer either because kids at that age aren't going to give a crap about something if you don't at least show a little interest and at six they are certainly old enough to remember if mommy or daddy spent their entire practice playing Candy Crush. If there is a line to be found between over-enthusiastic sports parents and indifference these people haven't quite mastered it yet.

There is a part of me that wonders if a few of these parents were just keeping their emotions under wraps because they are painfully aware of the stigma attached to overzealous parents in youth sports and they don't want to become one of "those" people that all the other parents stare at and judge. I could tell that the impulse to yell out additional instruction was definitely bubbling below the surface of a couple people, especially this one guy who was one of the few people to switch drills along with me. He keep telling his daughter to keep her head up and pay attention and I could totally see him getting more intense if his daughter showed even the slightest bit of interest. (Ironically she have been the most spaced-out kid of them all, so it is also possible that he was just getting frustrated because he spends his entire life trying to get her to pay attention.) Of course it needs to be pointed out I was standing at attention the entire hour so it is just as likely he was thinking the same thing about me. Still, even though he had a few moments where it looked like he cared a bit too much they were very brief. And even if his tempered enthusiasm was all an act, I am happy to report that for all the reports that you can't go to a child's sporting event without a brawl breaking out between parents, most of parents in this particular league appear to have a healthy grasp on reality and know that pushing a kid too hard at this age is more likely to cause them to forever quit a sport than master it. Of course, this was just practice - the games could be a totally different story.