Old-school sports parenting

Good posts by gtlaw and jgmacg and else. I come from the other side of the stream having earned an athletic scholarship to a D1 school with total of parent's attendances registering at zero. Subject cuts many ways beyond the ridiculous arts vs sports dichotomy. Only S I give is that the proven/proud/brave among us could have chosen a more formidable foe like maybe the General Arts kids who rebuild old Chevy's in back lot.

 

Guy's a hypocrite. If he was really "old school" he'd drop his kids off at the gym/field/rink and come back two hours later. Certain examples (Press Maravich, West Texas football) aside, "sports parenting" is a pretty modern concept. There's nothing old school about it.

That said, I also have a hard time lending credibility to anyone with a website that shitty. Comes across as just another jerk with a shingle to me.

But I've appreciated the exchange on this thread. Good input here.

 

Good one.

My dad worked shifts and would come to my games when he could. I certainly didn't think anything of it when he didn't. My mother (there were six of us) never came to a single sporting event. She'd ask, "Did you win?" and that was about the extent of it.

In Canada, some people claim that the root of all this parent involvement goes back to the 60's when the Canadian Hockey Association came up with an ad campaign with the shout line, "Don't send, TAKE your son (boys only back then) to the rink".

My buddy & I used to walk a couple of miles (uphill each way in a snowstorm) tp our hockey practices --with our hockey bags over our shoulders

As an aside, a friend of mine--about the same age--once said to me, "You know the difference between us and our parents? Our parents ignored us".

Struck me as funny at the time but it was perfectly true. They did not dote on us. Clothes, food, shelter, an education. The rest was pretty much up to us.

 

I tried not to miss any of my son's fencing competitions or my daughter's performances.
Didn't seem like an issue.
I liked doing it.

 

This was my first thought. The guy trumpets a bunch of new phenomena, such as single-sport specialization, and calls himself an "old school" sports parent. FRAUD!

EDIT: One other thing. I see parents attending high school sports teams' practices all the time, and I'm blown away by this. If my parents ever would have hung around at practice, I would have been mortified.

 

"And most of all, who aren’t afraid to hold their kids accountable for their own athletic success or failure, instead of blaming coaches, politics and Global Warming when their college scholarship or pro contract don’t materialize."

He forgot to include blaming the media.

 

My mom made a lot of my baseball games. My dad might have seen three of them. I remember being a little disappointed by that.

Lot of good points here.

 

Norman Dale ended the trend at his school.

 

I am encouraged by his inclusion of the following:

 

IMHO, sports is an outlet from the demands of school and work. For the fortunate few, very few, sports is their livelihood and I commend them. But for America's society sports obsession has become life to many, as reflected in the obscene amounts of $$ that we are willing to pay for viewing sports and in the breaks that we give to athletes, not just professionals, but all the way down to the star SS on the little league team. (A byproduct is the intense media coverage and hence the occupation for many of the posters here.)

I believe we need to regain perspective on what sports is.

 

The perspective on sports is what the public wants it to be.

They want sports to be important in their lives, so it is. Doesn't make them wrong, or you. It's just what it is.

 

I've long been tired of the term "old school" myself.
I refuse to use it in my writing, to the point of avoiding using any quotes with somebody using the term.