Sideline Scene- Division I volleyball coach to parents: Keep perspective

Every once in a while, you come across something, an opinion or a point of view held by someone, and you just want jump up and shout “Yes — that!”

For me, such a moment came recently when I came across an opinion piece by UCF volleyball coach Todd Dagenais on ContextFlorida.com. Dagenais, who will be writing six more pieces as part of the statewide opinion forum, titles his piece “Parents of young athletes need to keep everything in perspective” — and, I’ll be honest, it was love at first read.

As someone who has been covering prep and youth sports in a hyper-local context for more than three years now, I’m all too familiar with the good and the bad that comes with dedicated parents. 

The good is great — parents, through volunteering their time, help make a world of opportunity and enjoyment open to kids. Some of my own fondest memories from being a kid are from playing sports. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t any good (I became a sports writer for a reason, you know), it was the act of playing competitive sports with friends that, more than a decade later, is so memorable. The volunteering of time by parents, including my own, made that possible.

But, as we all know but perhaps don’t like to discuss as much, the bad can be pretty bad. I spoke to Dagenais last week about his piece, which was published on Aug. 7, and he used the term “helicopter parent,” which I became instantly fond of, picturing the way some parents will just hover around their child.

I suggest you read the piece on your own, but here’s the short version of what I took away from it: too many parents are spending too much money with the intention of that money paying off in a Division I athletic scholarship.

It’s not to say that the massive boon in participation in club sports, a trend that has created regional empires of sorts like Orlando Volleyball Academy and a demand for personal lessons, is bad. Quite the contrary, actually.

“I think club sports and private lessons absolutely have their place,” Dagenais said. “I think it should be for somebody who wants to get better … enjoys playing the sport and has that passion for the sport.”

What it comes down to, really, is the intent behind why a parent is spending considerable amounts of money on year-round club sports. In our interview, Dagenais — a coach of a Division I program, himself — acknowledged what most sports people already know, that most recruiting is done on the club circuits. 

Less and less often are college coaches scouting athletes at high school sporting events, preferring to see athletes compete against a higher level of competition at showcase events over the summer — when the coaches, themselves, tend to have a little more time to evaluate them.

So, if an athlete in any sport has collegiate aspirations, club sports are necessary. And they can be fun — providing opportunities to make new friends and travel to new places through them. 

I wouldn’t dream of condemning the booming industry of club sports so much as to just encourage perspective, much like Dagenais’ piece does. It’s that fixation of so many parents on their child’s ability to earn a scholarship that leads to so many of those ugly incidents, where parents get into it with coaches over playing time or get into verbal altercations with other parents.

That intent is misguided, for more reasons than one.

“I think that those that do it with the intent, with the sole intent, of trying to put [their child] in a position to get a Division I scholarship — I think they’re just making a mistake,” Dagenais said. “Just based on [the numbers] alone, the odds are not great.”

Dagenais crunches the numbers in his piece — and they’re not super encouraging. As he tells it, there are thousands of girls (roughly 100,000) graduating each spring and looking to play college volleyball, with programs like his at UCF only having usually three scholarships a year to offer.

What so often gets lost in all of this is the fact that this is supposed to be fun. That’s why, although it doesn’t figure to do much for an athlete’s recruiting prospects, he still encourages girls to play for their high school team. Representing your school and community, and bonding with your classmates, is something most athletes will remember for the rest of their lives.

In three words towards the end of his piece, Dagenais perfectly sums up how both parents and their athletes, who also can be susceptible to a gross lack of perspective, should approach those teenage years that are filled with weekend showcases and practices on most weeknights — “Enjoy these years.”

And he’s right. Enjoy these years, because, for the astronomical majority of athletes — across all sports — you’re actual playing career will end relatively soon. Even if an athlete does play a sport in college, after four years he or she is done, hopefully with a degree to show for it and hopefully starting a new career.

It would be my hope that most former athletes will be able to look back fondly on those years.

As for the parents, Dagenais offered one last bit of advice as we concluded our interview.

“Let the coach coach, let the kid play, be a good supportive parent of the entire team,” Dagenais said. “That would really be my advice more than anything else.”

Take it from him — he’s the guy who might be recruiting your daughter one day, anyway.