All-area team complaints: How do you respond?

Cool, but probably aggravated assault and possibly a felony by your ASE.

 

One thought on this thread:

Of course parents and coaches are going to complain, often unreasonably.

But I get the sense that everyone thinks their all-area (or all-whatever) teams are perfectly put together and exempt from criticism.

This was one of the most difficult things I always had to do. I always worried whether I was leaving someone deserving off, giving too much weight to a coach who was overselling his kids, not comparing big/small schools or public/private schools fairly, etc.

So unless everyone here is just that much better than I was, I think you should try to put aside your natural inclination to disregard or mock complaints and try to see if there is a way you can do better with the next one.

If you can talk the parents/coaches down and listen, you can probably get at least a story or an idea of how to do better the next time from about half of the angry coach/parent calls.

(Of course, some are just assholes.)

 

So, you're telling us your ASE should be in a prison cell.

 

ASE is clearly a man of action. Most that I've known would have sent a staff person out to deal with Dad.

Oh, and I'm reminded of the unhappy reader who told me he wanted me to drive the 50 miles to where he lived so he could punch me in the nose. I politely declined.

 

If that story's true, and the ASE wasn't fired that night, then the dad was right and you guys are a bunch of mongoloid shit dicks.

 

No way in hell this happened. Your ASE would have been arrested, probably prosecuted, and fired. I don't buy this for a fucking second.

 

This is fair. Sometimes, folks make some sense. Sometimes there's a gap in perception. Sometimes you've got to change things (I knew a sister paper to somewhere I worked had two teams, one for big schools, one for small, a model that wasn't bad).

But sometimes folks are just looking for something they think the world owes their kid, who generally doesn't care.

I ran into one such spot with an all-area baseball team. We had about 10 teams and zero true third basemen that were that good. What we did have was a kid who was one of the area's better players who started the year at third and then switched to short halfway through. With a kid who hit .400 on a good team also available at short, we decided the first kid could go to third.

That year, a local coaches organization made their own all-area team with an eye toward getting more kids names out there (there's a term for that, participation something). They gave our third baseman a "defensive player of the year" award, splitting the difference and put .400 Shortstop's teammate on there. This ended with teammate's mom sending us an nasty email basically implying we missed out on including her son and that was a great injustice. We pulled up the numbers, saw he was a .236 hitter, and declined to respond.

 

When I was doing the All-Area stuff for football, I could always anticipate which selections would create some upset responses and I had my defenses for those selections ready. But I always tried to handle it maturely, even in the face of an angry, irrational parent or coach. It was always "Well I'm sorry you feel that way. XXXXX certainly had a great season and I wish we had a spot for him but there were a lot of great performances at that position this year."

One I had no way of anticipating was the anger I stirred in one reader with my All-Area cross country selections one year. To me, this was always the easiest one. I have all of the race results and times. Fastest five go in the first team. Next fastest five the second team. Then a few honorable mentions. I would occasionally make exceptions if someone won a state championship in a lower classification but with a slower time, but for the most part it was formulaic.

That was until I received an email and follow-up phone call DEMANDING I print a retraction and place a girl I had put in the honorable mentions on the second team at least. When I called the guy back (not even a coach or a parent, just a local cross country "fan"), he went off, saying anyone who knew anything about the sport knew that girl was one of the best in the area, that I was a fool and if I had any respect for myself or my paper, I would resign. I looked at the comparative race times and this girl was at least 30 seconds slower than anyone on the second team. When I told him that, he just said "well that just shows how little you know about the sport."

My response, admittedly too snarky in hindsight, was "well that may be true, but I do know the fastest runners usually have lower times."

He did not respond well to that.

 

The best thing you can have are a group of coaches you trust and who trust you.

At one stop, we did the regular all-area team, which was a legit team, 11 offensive and 11 defensive, plus punter and kicker. When the season was over, we'd go out with a group of 3-4 coaches, have some fried chicken and beers, and we'd pick their brains. They'd tell us who from their team belonged, didn't belong and who they had to game plan around and who they could ignore on opposing teams. It was all off the record, and they'd even tell us which parents would bitch at us from their schools.

It was the best resource we could hope for, and it made the task fun and much easier. And it made the all-area teams really good ones, too.

I should have realized I needed to go beat up any complaining parents ...

 

If it was close, I could see the guy pointing out she usually competed on tougher courses where everyone's times were slower or that she battled some injury all season. But to throw the "You don't know anything" without explaining what you supposedly don't know is worse than the "worked just as hard" parent.

 

His argument was an injury. Fortunately, in the area I covered, there were usually two or three big races where pretty much all the schools competed on the same course. So finding a baseline comparison was pretty easy. She injured her knee (something serious but not an ACL tear) in the summer and didn't start racing until later in the season. Once she did start racing, she did quite well. Just not as well as several others in the area. I told him that I couldn't put her above other runners because of what she "would have" done had she not been injured, but reason was already out the door for this guy.

He told me he would never read my paper again and would tell all the other cross country parents to do the same. All I could say was "I'm sorry you feel that way, but I'll continue to cover the sport as best I can."

Come to think of it, that was the last fall I had to do All-Area selections. I switched careers after the winter season, sensing a round of budget cuts coming my way. I should go back and see if that girl ever made it to the second team. She was a junior I believe.

 

If that's what you think you should do, you're doing it wrong.

You need to seek out the father and go beat the shit out of him.