[Young Drachma]

As a HS coach, I'd been pretty fortunate to have parents who were super supportive or left me alone. I had an experience this summer where I went to coach a team somewhere else and it was all of the worst sport parent stories, except I don't coach a sport anybody really cares about, so it wasn't nearly as bad as what basketball or football coaches get. Still, I hadn't experienced it before.

I read a lot of articles about coaches who had won state titles in other states who were quitting because of the parents, it was illuminating and made me appreciate what I had normally because I had no idea how insane it could be.

The professionalization of youth sports is so nuts, dunno where we went wrong but things are completely unhinged now and there's no putting the genie back in the bottle. It's not all parents, obviously, some coaches are also to blame and administrators but...it's astounding how toxic it all is now.

I realized how high the stakes might be for someone who does this stuff for a living and how parents try to exert control in ways that I just hadn't considered. Luckily for me, it's extremely a hobby and I don't care about the money...but I think a lot about the people who do and how difficult it must be to deal with this stuff.