But on the subject of flopping, we've had to coach our son pretty hard to stop flopping. He watched some Neymar highlight video a month or so ago and had a few games where he has tried to do it. He got reinforced the first time because it paid off for a PK that he scored on, but we have constantly talked to him about not doing it ever since both before and after his games. I think he's started to realize it winds up hurting the team more than it helps more often than not.
I'm just barely getting to know any of the other parents, as it turns out the only one if his teammates this season that he has had on a previous team, I have honestly never figured out who his parents are. Wife did tell me she was sitting with one other players grandmother last Saturday, who apparently noted it as well.
Wife and I were complaining to each other about this last week. It's bullshit that you have to commit to a program that doesn't start for another 5-months. Meanwhile our son also wants to give baseball a try (which I think he'd like). Old man yelling at cloud incoming, but I miss each sport having their own season. When I was my son's age, I was able to play baseball, football, and basketball because they barely overlapped if at all.
This, they haven't so much have done a single corner kick or throw in drill in practice Just dribble up and kick toward goal Run up and receive pass from coach and kick toward goal Shuttle drill, etc. Only live play type practice is half field and just a free for all And to top it off this season is the first for any of them to play 6 on 6 All previous seasons have been 4 on 4
It’s not just the flopping, it’s that the kid was a total asshole about it. The second the call was made he was miraculously cured and would start doing chest bumps with his teammates. And these were obvious flops. Outside of the one where my son legitimately turned goon and smashed him, the others were just him dropping down and grabbing his leg the second one of our players got near him.
I’d had it. Our team is really bad. Like, almost never even competitive bad. I was pissed because for once they were actually playing well against a much better team. We were only down 2-1, and one of those two scores was a flop-assisted PK. Then he gives the other team 2 more PKs to basically end the game by the start of the second half. Our kids have been totally demoralized by the club and staff all year and I wasn’t going to let some shithead ref take this away from them without hearing about it. Right after I got kicked out he made another shit call and another dad on the team got tossed for it, too.
1)Were you a parent or a coach for this? 2)The fact that at 12 this kid had already mastered diving is pathetic. 3)Can we please turn this into a shitty ref tangent because my god I have some whoppers from my youth travel hockey days. 4) Get your kid on some skates with that kind of nasty streak.
A guy that coaches our sons U8 travel soccer team with me also helps with his daughters U11 team. He told me yesterday that during his daughters game on Saturday, an opposing teams dad came out onto the field to argue/scream at the ref after his daughter was tackled. The coach of the opposing team tried to cut the dad off before he got too far onto the field, apparently the 2 of them got into an argument, along with the ref.
Like I’m not trying to be a dick here but do you think lighting up the ref from the parents sideline is going to result in the desired effect? From everything I’ve ever see it typically has the opposite impact. In the end it seems like you wound up in the same exact spot on the field with a scene off of it. It sounds like a really rough season and I’m sorry to hear that, just seems like maybe we could have gone about that differently in the moment.
Bad calls happen. But consistently bad calls against one side aren’t just an accident. This was a tournament on the west coast of Florida and we were playing one of the home teams, to boot.
Yeah it still seems weird to me holding tryouts before the end of the year and a summer away from the start of the next. You are going to have kids who put in work over the summer and some who don't. Kids are going to grow. A whole bunch of change is going to happen. Most frustrating part might be dealing with the secrecy all the other parents have about if they are going to be back or if they are going elsewhere.
I’ve been coaching one of my kid’s teams for 12 years now. I can’t believe I’m just discovering this thread now… A few of my favorites: The (opposing) mom who was cursing at her son’s coach for not starting her kid. Then walked across the middle of the field right before kick-off to grab her kid and quit the team. The opposing coach who got a red for arguing but wouldn’t leave the field so the game got forfeited in our favor (even though we were down 4-1 with 5 minutes to go.)
El Tiburon you’re definitely part of the problem, but I respect your youth sports ahole game and the grace in which you share it with tmb
I’ve only ever had one other close call in terms of a threat of being booted, and it was in a game where the other team was playing outright dirty and the ref was a youngish guy who had played for the same club in his younger days. He knew the kids by name and was socializing with them on the field. It was getting to where there was a risk of legit injury to our kids. Two of them went out for the game after getting severely cleated and my son took a huge elbow to the nose which was not called either. I learned my lesson in that game that if you don’t intervene early, it’s a matter of time before someone gets hurt. Same thing bothered me here. The other team was getting emboldened by the ref and taunting our kids, ergo the situation where Tib, Jr. had enough and took a kid out. I’m glad he stood up for himself, but at the same time that level of escalation doesn’t get there if the ref controls the game early on.
Unrelated but this reminds me of when I won a $100 gift card at trivia because the guy in 1st that was easily going to win kept giving the host shit about semantics until she got so fed up she ended it and gave me the $ since I was in 2nd.
Wait, what age group is this? 6v6 should be for U8. Or are you talking about 6 outfield players plus a goalie? 7v7 would be U10.
It's 10U, counting the goalie in the numbers I think I was mistaken, it was 5 v 5 before, one defender and the goalie Now we have 6 v 6 with 2 defenders and the goalie I think they have chosen # of players on the field by the number of players per team each year.
It's amazing the ego trips these parents have that coach. Most just do it to guarantee their kids start and get most of the playing time or just want to stack teams to win in rec leagues. It starts at such a young age now. My daughter did kindergarten basketball. She can't even reach the hoop when she shoots. They don't keep score or anything but after our first game our coach was literally upset that we lost. It's just a bunch of 5 year Olds that can't dribble or anything running around having fun. People need to get a grip
Gonna go from least egregious to most egregious. 1) Playing in a completely meaningless scrimmage top prep for a major tournament where the ref was clearly brand new to the sport of hockey (no idea how they found this guy) was allowing the home team to call time outs at any time while the puck was in play. Ex. we'd have a breakaway, their coach would scream timeout, and the ref would blow the play dead. By the end of the game, our coach was so annoyed he started doing the same thing whenever they would have an odd man rush and low and behold, he blew his whistle to stop play for us as well. Just a completely bizarre game. Obviously not a big deal because it was a scrimmage, but it was so bizarre I never forgot it. 2) Lost a game in a tournament where the game winning "goal" went off the post over my right shouler and then went into the corner. After signaling goal the ref said that the puck wrapped around the top of the net and spit out the other side. Pointed out to him that it defied the laws of physics for the puck to do what he said, so he then changed his tune to there being a hole in the net. So I checked the net for a hole and of course there was none. Goal stood and I got an unsportmanlike penalty for arguing with him. Quoting this here because these next two were exactly what Tib is talking about. 3) High School State Quarterfinals my senior year. We had a ref who had been an issue for us all season. Every game he officiated was extremely one sided. I'm talking 5+ penalties on us, 0 on whoever we were playing regardless of how physical the game was. This quarterfinal game was no different. Insane power play discrepancy that helped an inferior team stay ahead of us all game. We mount an insane 3rd period comeback to be down 1 late. I get pulled with about a minute left. I'm skating to the bench and am about a foot away from the bench when our extra attacker jumps on (perfectly legal in hockey). Literally as this happens we score the game tying goal. Ref immediately waives it off and gives us a too many men penalty saying that the forward jumped on the ice too soon. Complete joke of a call made even worse by the fact that the forward was at center ice when the goal was scored. Had less than nothing to do with the goal being scored. Had a chance to win states taken from me by a shit head ref who just didn't like our school. 4) This was when I was helping coach my brother's county wide U12 travel hockey team. We were playing a road game where the ref and scoreboard operator wer some teenagers who had clearly played on the home team when he was younger. All game with horrendous call after horrendous call with like a 10-2 PP advantage in a 36 minute game. Egregious Examples include 1) the scoreboard operator waiting a good 5-10 seconds to start the clock after every face off whenever the home team had a power play and forgetting to stop the clock after whistles when we had power plays. 2) calling a too many men penalty on us after dropping the puck to start play. Due to all the penalties the kids were confused who whould be on the ice so at the faceoff we had 4 guys out there when it should have been three. Instead of sending a guy back to the bench, ref dropped the puck and immediately called a too many men penalty. 3) Said our goalie's stick was broken and had to be taken out of play. (It had a scratch mark on it from a skate hitting it.) He didn't bring an extra so he finished the game with a player's stick. 4) We had a breakaway at the end of either the 1st or second period and the ref blew the whistle with 2 seconds left on the clock stopping play so we never got the shot off. Last but definitely not least Playing at the AAU Roller Hockey National Championships in Walt Disney World. AKA the best roller hockey tournament there is. In a game I made a glove save on a breakaway. Shooter gets frustrated and takes a full baseball swing at my glove, knocking both the glove and the puck into the net. Instead of a goalie interference or slashing penalty, ref calls it a good goal. I lost my mind, took an unsportsmanlike penalty and even my mother who hates everything sports related went full El Tiburon and got herself thrown out yelling at the ref. Never seen anything like it.
We had a 7U baseball on Saturday where the coach on the other team insisted on arguing every call. a little bickering here and there is fine I guess but generally there better be a big fucking incident to justify a coach pausing a game to have a pow wow with an umpire in 7U coach pitch baseball. this son of a bitch did it three times. Finally I jokingly asked one of his assistants while we were on the field between innings if this guy is an attorney, because that's his "natural fucking calling" and the other guy just laughed and said as a matter of fact he is, and he does this every game. Some people just insist on being heard and listened to like they are a little special boy. No matter how ridiculous it is they look or how much of a bad example they set for their own kids. I'm not sure what age it is justified to start ragging on the umpires but it's certainly not 7. I told that guy's assistant coach that he's the reason it's so hard to find people to ref our kids games.
I remember basketball at that age. Our coach would draw two red X's on each side of the rim and say dribble to the X and shoot. That was the entire plan. I think I made like 2 total baskets the entire season.
Uhhh for 7U if you say anything to the official more than “great weather tonight, eh?” “We’ve got some seeds over here if you want to help yourself” or “thanks for being here tonight, enjoy the rest of your night” then your should have no place in a dugout
My oldest is 7 and super into hockey but he’s still new. Unfortunately there isn’t anything really between rec (no keeping score) “games” and travel. But thankfully the rink we go to everyone is pretty chill for the rec games. There’s a couple parents yelling benign things as their kids are practicing to tryout for travel. But mostly it’s a fun place thankfully. In just dreading what comes next. I just want him to have fun becusse he loves hockey. That said, 6-8 year olds absolutely beat the shit out of each other out there. Not during the games though. I just mean when they are bored standing in line to do a drill at practice. You let 7 year olds stand there and someone is hitting the floor
I coached 10U basketball. In a game we won despite bad refereeing, a mom came up to me to show me the game footage she had so I could point out the ref’s mistakes to him. Told her we won and even if we lost, not that serious.
I mean if its a contact sport at that age and there is a kid who is ahead of the growth curb and uses that size advantage to bully other kids out there, I think it's fair to point out to the ref, hey that kid is going to hurt somebody. Outside of that, agree with you 100%
South Orlando babe Ruth for 4-6 year olds has a draft, scorekeeping, 2 practices a week plus a game a week. A couple weekends you play 2 games. the first two strikes are coach pitch (yes to kids as young as 4). Then it’s on the tee. 2 fouls is strike 3. Scores are kept, standings are kept, there’s a playoff for the top teams but not all teams. Some coaches were absolutely dicks though. machine pitch at 7. thankfully in one season we didn’t see anything bad from parents. Most were there to just hope kids had fun. Thankfully they also had mandatory position rotation rules to keep all stars in check. oh and they had all stars.
Did I mention practice was typically around 2 hours? (confession: it was actually pretty relaxing to bring a 6 year old to practice and then you get 2 hours to chill) I will say at that age the extra practice DID show during games. By mid season they know what they’re doing from the most part. But yeah it’s a lot. oh and it’s hard not to get into it as a parent at that point. If the league is serious. Then you are serious.
60+% of those hits were errors I’m saying this from experience. The GameChanger app is awesome but the parents keeping books aren’t the brightest. My 12U daughter got credit for an in the park HR over the weekend that was a triple, didn’t get credit for a sacrifice, etc. It annoys me but I keep it to myself.
I kept the stats in that screenshot myself tbh just for fun. They don’t publish the game books online or anything thankfully. At least at that age. And at that age if it’s on base it’s a hit in my personal scorebook i only kept for my son. Most of the time it was since kids can’t throw 3rd to 1st well even if it’s on target. But yeah I ain’t counting no fielders choice. On base = hit. Edit: found my google sheet
Next door neighbors team was at that tournament (U-8). The program director for all of Tampa Bay United is their coach. About half the kids are on a flag football team that plays on Friday nights and he told them and their parents they couldn't play on Friday bc they needed to rest. Their first tournament game wasn't until like 11:30 the next day
The whole weekend was a shit show. The games were scattered at places far from the hotels. We stayed at the Hyatt in downtown Sarasota and there were proms going on both nights so the valet service was a nightmare, too.