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AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


5 Dumbest Things Parents Have Told Me

by: David Marco
AFM Youth Coaching Expert
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A friend of mine once asked me why I coach for the Bill George Youth Football League. I told him that I do it because I couldn’t get my dream job at a prison or an orphanage. He looked at me strangely as if he didn’t understand my response. He asked me why and I said because they don’t have alumni or parents.


This is an old coaching joke but any of us that have held a clipboard can relate to it. Keep in mind that 90% - 95% of parents are wonderful. I have a drawer and an email folder full of very heartfelt letters of thanks and appreciation. However, the 5% - 10% that remain do leave quite an impression on all of us. Below are some of my favorite stories that I thought everyone could enjoy and relate to. All names have been changed to protect the not so innocent.

It’s Physically Impossible for My Overweight Son to Lose Weight
The league that I coach in slots players at levels based on a combination of age and weight as each level is assigned an age and a weight. A player cannot play at a level where his age is greater than that levels maximum allowable age or where his weight is greater than what is allowed. Several years ago I was coaching a 90 pound/10 year old level. A player (let’s call him Burt) that was 98 pounds and 10 years old was playing at the 100 pound/11 year old level because of weight (age is a maximum not a minimum). The 100 pound coach sent him down to my 90 pound level in hopes that the player could lose the weight and play with kids his own age. I soon discovered that there was more to the story. The 100 pound coach had coached Burt before and said that he was terribly disruptive at practice, completely afraid of contact and that he hated playing football but his dad (let’s call him John) made him play. This coach had some words to describe John; however, we are not allowed to use any of them at AFM. Burt needed to lose 8 pounds to stay at my level and had 4 weeks to lose the weight. Since Burt had a good deal of extra weight on his body this was not a concern. Unfortunately, John had a difference of opinion. John comes to me after practice and tells me that he and his wife are doctors and that it is “physically impossible” for his 10 year of son to lose 8 pounds (said in the most arrogant tone you can imagine). Since his son was carrying plenty of weight to lose I assured him that this is not physically impossible and instead would be quite attainable. He then stated that he didn’t want his son playing at a lower level and “dominating” everyone. Keep in mind we have two teams at a level. A Gold team of elite players and a Silver team of everyone else. His son is what we call a MPP (minimum play player) Silver player, meaning he is the type of player that when he is in the game you just pray the other team doesn’t run at him. In fact, at practice we had 65 pound players routinely running over Burt in tackling drills. I looked at John and I assured him that he needn’t worry about Burt “dominating” at the level. The best part of this story is that I ran the 90 pound level and was head coach of the Gold team. Our Silver team has a different head coach that had to deal with John and Burt daily. That coach deserved a Purple Heart for that task.

My Son Dominated the Bears Training Camp
John and Burt are the gift that keeps on giving. Later that same season Burt had earned very little playing time and John was getting angry about it. He came to me and said the reason why his son is playing so badly is because of the Silver head coach (who was 6 – 2 that season and is the best Silver coach in my suburb!). As proof of his son’s greatness he said that Burt went to the Chicago Bears Youth camp during the summer and that he played great. It turns out that the Bear’s camp is nothing more than a goodwill, community outreach where 2nd and 3rd string NFL players play catch with kids in shirts and shorts. In fact he told the Silver coach in an email that I was copied on “He wants to know all of the complex details of a situation before he puts in an effort…He will default to not trying rather than making a mistake…It may seem like a crazy idea, but I would suggest giving him duties in practice as a blocking back/fullback, or whatever the Falcons call such a position (maybe even give him the ball).  Think about it, he is one of the heaviest kids on the team and running is about the only way to score in this league---chasing him down or being blocked by him with a running start would be a formidable task for some of the kids.”  Since Burt was the worst blocker on the team I could assure you that we would need an ambulance for the RB that would have Burt lead block for him.


Personally I felt sorry for Burt as he didn’t want to play football and his dad made him go out for the team. John would then blame everyone else for his son’s failings. Really it was John’s dilutions’ of grandeur for him that was the cause of the problems.


Young Bill Walsh?
I had a 9 year old player named Tom. Tom was very small and very slow for the level (both Gold and Silver teams). In fact, he had the 2nd slowest 40 yard dash of any player. In addition, he was a first year player that was not comfortable with hitting yet. As a result, he was placed on the Silver team. Oddly enough his parents were stunned that he didn’t make Gold. They told me that Tom knows “EVERYTHING” about football. I’ve personally played and watched football my entire life, plus I have coached for over 6 years, and I am very long way away from knowing “everything”. They then provided me with further proof of Tom’s amazing football skills. They said he was an amazing Madden video game player! Suddenly I realized why his 40 time was so poor.


Some Help Is Better Than None
I had a Silver head coach that had to run the entire team without any other adult helping him. Several times he asked the parents of his players if anyone would be willing to assist him. Not a single one volunteered. As a result, he had his 14 year old son Jack assist him. Jack was a terrific coach! He studied our playbooks, was great with the kids and worked very hard. Personally I would take Jack over 70% of the dads that volunteer. Anyway the Silver head coach had to travel on business for a few days and would miss a couple of practices. I asked a couple of my Gold assistant coaches to help out Jack while his dad was away. On one of the days my assistant coach forgot to assist Jack so he just ran the practice himself, which he did quite well. One of the Silver team’s dads saw this and was infuriated. He cornered me after my practice to complain about having a 14 year old running the team that day. He stated “I paid good money and I expect the same level of coaching for Gold as for Silver.” I then informed him that every coach in Hinsdale coaches for free, donates 20 – 30 hours a week of their time and actually ends up spending 3 – 10 times the amount of money coaching than a parent does towards football fees for playing. Also that he, like every other parent at the level refused to help. They parent had precious little to say at that point.


A Tool By Any Other Name
I saved the best story that I could tell publicly for last. It involves William (the dad) and his son Johnny. William is a member of my organization’s executive board. I believe his key reason for being on the board is to exert pressure on his son’s head coach. Sadly this was me a few years ago. Johnny was a solid football player. Not a star but a kid who had good size, hit at a decent level but was slow and lacked much coordination. The team he was on was a perennial cellar-dweller. I took over the team and assigned positions to players based on where they could help the team be as successful as possible. Johnny became a starter at DT and played there the entire season.


William was responsible for writing articles on our team for the local newspapers. I would provide William with each game’s statistics and a very detailed outline that we would flesh out and give to the papers. William actually took my story and changed the statistics in the article crediting his son with 2 sacks in the game. When I confronted him on the matter he said “I saw the plays and I know Johnny got those sacks.” I then informed him that when I reviewed the game film it did show that Johnny got to the QB twice; however, there was one small problem. He missed both tackles and the QB had to get tackled by someone else who did get credit for the sacks. Sadly William was not done.


That year we started off slowly as we played 3 outstanding teams earlier in the schedule. Every one of those teams beat us to give us a disappointing 2 – 3 beginning. It was at this point that William decided to make his power play move. After our third loss William demanded 1) that his son play FB even though he is the slowest player on the team and fumbles on every other carry; 2) the dad that takes our statistics is doing a poor job of recording the sacks that he thinks Johnny is making; 3) that I have “stolen his son’s love for the game”; and 4) I should move his son to LB and move our starting LB (who was our best player and the best youth LB I have ever coached) to DT.


My number one coaching rule is that I do not play politics. I would rather not coach than succumb to this type of pressure. Obviously I did not make any changes to our team and instead insisted that William stayed out of our team’s affairs. To make a long story short, our team went on a 5 game winning streak that took us all the way to the Super Bowl. Johnny had the best game of his life in our semi-final victory over a team that had defeated this group of players 6 times in a row. Johnny earned our defensive player of the game award. Since I stopped coaching them Johnny’s team would never again finish at 500 or win a playoff game. To this day Johnny always says hello to me and I know he cherishes that Super Bowl  memory. So much for stealing his love for the game!


Coach David Marco – Biography
Coach David Marco is entering his 6th year of youth coaching and his 4th as a Head Coach for the Hinsdale Falcons of the Bill George Youth Football League (www.BGYFL.org). BGYFL is one of the largest and most competitive leagues in northern Illinois. As a head coach, his teams have earned 2 Super Bowl Runner-Up trophies and 1 Super Bowl Championship trophy. In his last 2 years his teams have been the Super Bowl runner-up at the 100 Gold (11 year old) and 80 Gold levels (9 year old). These teams previously had been perennial sub .500 teams that had never won a playoff game. Over the last two years Coach Marco’s teams have recorded 13 shutouts in 21 games. Offensively they have averaged 15.0 and 27.5 points per game in 2007 and 2008 respectively. Coach Marco utilizes the Double Wing on offensive and the 5 – 3 Flex on defense. He may be reached at CoachDMarco@gmail.com






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