Anyone else getting bombarded by angry parents?

Waylon and others: I'm not going to quote any post, because a number of questions were asked. So let me ask one:

Are the cynics here who are talking about "living vicariously" through kids and all that other stuff actually saying that it's not fun when you see your name, or the name of a close relative, in a newspaper?

Really?

I guess I've lived in a different world than some of you.

It IS fun. Reading your kids' name (or your own), seeing a picture of somebody you know in the paper ... that means nothing to anybody without some deep psychosis accompanying it?

I remember a lot of moments my kids accomplished in sports, an out-of-nowhere pitching performance here, a game-winning run there. My daughter won a JV Christmas tournament basketball game by scoring the final three points -- her only points -- including the winning basket at the buzzer -- also off the bench. JV, so wasn't in the paper. Won't ever forget it.

My "pushing" my kids into these sports? Zero. They wanted to play 'em and they did. Truth be told, attending youth and high school sporting events -- and the accompanying practices -- can be a gigantic pain in the ass. If they didn't want to play, I wouldn't have minded.

But they played, and it was fun when they personally accomplished something. And I say what's wrong with that.

And back to the original point -- it's fun to see people you know recognized for things.

Don't agree? I just don't get it. I never called a paper. But when a game they played was missing, was I a little disappointed, for them and me and the scrapbook? Sure.

And Waylon, I think you'll get it in 12-13 years, as you said.

In closing, how many of you went a long time getting a little charge when you saw your byline in the paper -- or still do?

 

SF - I think there is a Grand Canyon-sized difference between saying I want to understand the "psychology" behind this and me saying that it's a "psychosis."

And, for the record, I don't think there's anything wrong whatsoever with your small disappointment when your daughter's name didn't make it into the paper.

What I was hoping for was to use that example to get some understanding of how it goes from that - which is normal - to what a lot of us deal with day-in, day-out from looney prep parents. Which is not normal.

 

We stopped covering things because of staff. Now, only roundups and boxes. Only when it is a big game that MEANS something are we there. No more just cover games to cover games.

People have gotten used to it. It really depends what their expectations are with the readership. Just because Johnny plays baseball and it's fun and he works hard, doesn't mean he deserves a headline.

 

Geez.

I was not paying attention to what board I was on, and when I read this, I assumed, I was on Teachers.net.

 

The owner of volleyball club my daughter plays for got bombarded by angry parents today. Of course, I was one of them.

 

I once had a pretty good diver in my coverage area. She consistently won by wide margins at dual meets and was a regional champ her freshman or sophomore year. I showed up at three of her meets in the span of a month or so the following season -- once to write about someone else, the second to hopefully start work on a feature on her and the third to do a gamer.

She crashed and burned all three meets. After the third meet, she came up to me and jokingly begged me to stop coming to her meets. I think she actually won two of the three but didn't perform that well.

"Just stay away, and I'll call you each night to let you know how things went," she said.

I relayed the story to her parents after that meet while we were waiting for the kids to dress and board the bus, just trying to convey that I thought their daughter was cool and funny to be able to joke around like that.

Mom, however, snaps.

"If you'd written so much as one goddamned word about her last year you wouldn't be here jinxing her this year."

How can you argue with clear thinking like that?

 

At the moment, I'm dealing with the parent of a pitcher on a softball team that's in eighth place in an 11-team league that has a school with two recent state championships. The league currently has five teams tied for first place with one game to play.

Did I mention we cover about 70 spring sports teams?

What kills me is these parents never had a complaint before their kid reached varsity level, and they probably won't even read the section after said kid graduates.

Seriously, the next constitutional amendment should prevent parents from attending their children's sports events. If you are telling your kid to play sports to get their name in the paper, you are a horrible parent who is not properly preparing your kid for life.

 

If my staff hears me say "I can't wait until June 1" one more time I'm pretty sure they'll kill me. Thank God this crap is going to wrap up in the next week or so.

 

I wasn't talking about the perception of a psychotic condition from your post so much as I was the posts of others. The assumption of some is that anybody who appreciates it when their kids get recognition is "living vicariously" through them.

I had no more use for unreasonable parents than any of you -- believe me, I had some hellacious arguments with people at my final stop that involved preps -- but there are a lot of nice, normal kids and families who think it's great then they read something about their teams or whatever in the paper, and are disappointed when they expect something and it doesn't appear. And we can argue to the contrary all we want, but that's a healthy percentage of what high school coverage is about -- pleasing small constituencies that combine to make a large one that's an important segment of our readership, at least for the time being.

When your own kids are involved, perception changes. I'll tell you this -- I can't be more specific (wish I could, because it's a fun story) but a top, pro's pro, major beat writer at a major, major metro used to bug the absolute shit out of me because of my department's perceived undercoverage of his son. And this was an absolute ink-in-his-veins newspaper guy who would have told any other parent telling him how to run his department to fuck off.

It's a sickness, I tell ya.

 

For some reason these parents actually believe the only way their child will get a college scholarship is if they have a 25-word writeup in the sports section with the slightest mention of their name for college coaches to possibly see.

WTF over?!?!?!

 

It's frightening to ponder how scholarships I've cost kids.

 

We had a small-school team that was unbeaten through its first 10, 12 games, and parents were whining about how we hadn't been to any games yet.

So our SE sends a reporter and photog to next game, which was against a very good large-school team. Large school team beats the crap out of small school team.

SE starts getting parent calls on why did we cover them WHEN WE KNEW they were going to lose.

SE's response: "If your team would have pulled off an upset, you would be calling us up complaining that we missed the greatest upset of all-time."

Callers usually stuttered, and hung up after that.