Cross country parents

One parent is driving me crazy. I do a morning sports report for a radio station about local high school and college sports. Five high school teams went to the state cross country meet in California. The girls team from one of the schools, one of the best in the nation, won its fourth straight state championship. One of the boys teams finished third in its division. One of the girls team was making its first trip to the state meet.
I have one minute to put together a roundup of the weekend events, including playoff football. That amounts to about 250 words if I talk fast.
This one parent is upset that his son's team, which finished fifth in its division, didn't get more airtime. It was all included in my 25 seconds of cross country talk. What is it with parents who have no perspective? And newspaper types think it's tough.
Needed to rant. Feel better after venting. I'm going to go back to working on my teaching credential now.

 

(Insert name of sport) parents are the worst.

 

I've never had one issue with cross country parents.

And for the record, swimming parents are the complete worst.

 

Something about the humble arrogance of wrestling parents always gets to me.
But I will second swimming and throw a vote to soccer and for some reason, bowling.

 

I married a swim mom, and she agrees about that. It's all the early hours and the chlorine fumes.

 

Volleyball is always a bitch for us.

 

Swimming, hands down and well above any others.

 

One parent e-mailed me and complained we weren't running cross country scores. Of course, the reason was the lazy-ass coaches weren't reporting them to us.

So I wrote the parent back and basically told him if he wanted meet results in the paper, he was going to have to either ride the coaches' asses to send them in or gather them for us. I guess he ran into the same problem we had with the coaches. So he gathered the results, and actually did a decent job. Of course, his son was his district's best runner, so Dad had incentive.

 

Yeah, but it wokred.

The other kids got their names in, too.

 

No, I think soccer parents are the worst ... just because it's soccer.

I'll also rise to the defense of swim parents, at least here. They are the cool ones who keep the books and the stats in not only swimming, but water polo too, and even remember to e-mail swim results in (since water polo is bigger here than swimming). When they need something run on upcoming clinics or tournaments, their releases are pretty clean. Best of all, they know you can't be everywhere and are pretty good with tips on possible stories, especially in the dead of summer.

Yeah, there were a couple of bad eggs this year, complaining about the crosstown rivals getting in the paper too. But I had one of those Moments of Clarity when one claimed they should get more coverage because they were playing in the Division II playoffs and the rivals were in Divsion III. I told them,"Those divisions are set up on enrollment, not abilities."

 

Why don't you just explain to her that you have 30 seconds?

 

It's like trying to explain to a parent about column inches. They either don't understand or think the station is being unfair by not devoting more time to cross country. Time constraints or space constraint mean nothing to an irate, irrational parent.