When Helicopter Parenting Goes Wrong ...

You're letting the dad off the hook way too easy. At least by the Houston coach's account, the dad is the one he communicated with to say the kid most definitely is NOT playing there.

 

At a former stop a few years ago, we had a somewhat similar situation. School set up their big Signing Day ceremony with a handful of football players and others signing to play for colleges big and small. One kid was purported to be signing with a major-conference football team. Came to find out later that the kid was accepted into the school but was only going to try out for a walk-on spot. The coaches and ADs should know better than that ... having the kid on the stage signing a meaningless piece of paper. It's not like we wouldn't have written something about the kid otherwise, but it was pretty deceptive.

 

I didn't see anything in the column about how good the player was, no stats, all-star honors, anything like that.
My guess is he was a good player, maybe a legitimate Division II or III player, just not University of Houston material.
I don't know how many schools that paper covers but is there any reason why when they got the e-mail inviting them to the signing nobody said "That kid? Houston?"

 

Meh. Summer and fall baseball is so important these days that I'm not surprised that the newspaper or baseball coach didn't catch on (this wasn't like that football player who pulled out the Cal hat a few years ago). I also don't blame the coach who set up the signing ceremony and I do think that their author of this article unfairly threw him under a bus.

But this dad, sheesh. If that kid had a dream about walking on at Houston, well, he might as well start trying to find an intramural softball team now.

 

Giving helicopters a bad name.

 

I probably am, perhaps it's just being jaded from my first job, where parents bought into way too many of the delusions and misunderstandings of the recruiting process. It ended up being sort of tragic, but it gave me a healthy disregard for a lot of what parents say in the recruiting process.

I also should have clarified, when I say blame, I mean for this getting in the paper. The dad was awful, but when someone's being an idiot, a responsible adult has to step in. Coach/AD has that role in this case, and they failed to do it.

 

According to Maxpreps, which is only as good as the info it gets: .385 BA, 7 RBIs, 1 HR in 26 AB's. Survey sez: JuCo.

 

<a href="http://high-schools.com/report/tx/schools-in-el-paso-county.html">Looks like El Paso</a> has 56 public and private high schools in the county. Obviously not all of them field teams (the School-age Parent Center, anyone?), but that's a lot of kids to keep track of. I could see where a Conference USA school isn't hot on their radar.

 

I don't think the coach is a dick at all. The kid is a big enough boy to have known this was wrong.

 

Hondo: I sm unsure a 17- or 18-year-old has that savvy, especially if there was pressure from the parents and coach.

The dad certainly sounds like he has a history of this.

 

Had a similar situation pop up. One of our former stars at Little Christian School was "signing" with Big State University after his 2 years in JUCO, where he was very solid, but not a world-beater. I called the SID from BSU to try to get in touch with BSU's baseball coach. He asks the coach, who sitting nearby. No joy. BSU's coach calls me back, we have one of those "off-the-record" talks and find out he's just a walk-on. Not preferred. Just a walk-on. JUCO told us he had "signed." He ended up playing for a Division III school in Tennessee after realizing he wasn't going to see the field.

As Ronald Reagan said at Reykjavik: "Trust, but verify."

Cover your ass or you'll be in a world of excrement.