But all is good now. Youngest is playing up an age group and is away from a very bad situation. But here is what I was all ready to say.
My youngest
son loves a sport beyond belief. I’ll call that sport “shuffleboard.” He is in
his fifth year of playing shuffleboard. He plays shuffleboard whenever he can,
including seemingly non-stop against the house, at practice, at matches, on the
high school shuffleboard court with his dad, at recess and lunch at school,
after school with his friends, and in the mornings when we take the dog to the
field near a shuffleboard court. He watches shuffleboard matches with his dad,
rooting for his dad’s favorite team. He subscribes to shuffleboard magazines.
He knows the names of all the best professional shuffleboard players.
He wanted to
play competitive shuffleboard last year, but we weren’t ready to take on that
financial and time commitment of having him travel all over northern
California. We had also heard horror stories about the shuffling of parents off
the shuffleboard court. But he is shuffleboard-mad, so we took the plunge this
year, and he made the top team for his age group. He was the only player new to
the world of competitive shuffleboard to make the A team.
There have
been many incidents in his time on the competitive shuffleboard team that have
had my husband and me regretting the decision.
When I was
fired as manager by the coach after I
had done all the scut work of organizing kids’ birth certificates and forms and
payments and photos and held an extremely contentious meeting between A team
parents and B team parents. Why was I fired? Because I went to the shuffleboard
league to complain about how carryover funds from two years prior were being
distributed.
When we heard
how the coach yelled at nine-year-old boys when the team was losing, during
matches, singling out boys and screaming such good-sportsman-like statements
such as “Get the Goddamned shuffleboard thingie.”
When we saw
no rhyme or reason to how much time some boys played and some did not, musing
that perhaps it had more to do with the coach’s relationships with some
parents.
When we
heard how the coach yelled at referees when a call was missed or the coach
disagreed with the call.
When I found
myself sitting on the side of the shuffleboard court with the opposing team’s
parents because I was embarrassed at how he sounded.
When he
began substituting players every two to three minutes during 25-minute halves,
oftentimes barely letting a boy warm-up on the shuffleboard court before
yanking him.
When we
heard following Saturday’s match that his 15-minute post-match “pep talk”
included the use of obscenities and threats to move boys down to the B team.
He called
Sunday night and said he was moving my son down to the B team, to give him more
play time, he said. My husband spoke succinctly and brilliantly to him. I had
listened in on the call and when I had had enough, I called the coach a couple
of obscenities. I obviously get my good sportsmanship from the same place the
coach does.
We have paid
about $250 in registration fees, another $1,100 in team fees, another $235 for
the uniform and equipment, and another $150 for our portion of tournament fees.
We have paid plenty more in getting the kid to and from practices and games.
The first true game of the season was Saturday. The team lost 3-0. Of the 13
boys on the shuffleboard team, perhaps two played well. My son was not one of
those two players.
There are no
refunds. That’s the rule one agrees to when one signs a kid up for a
competitive shuffleboard team.
That’s a
hard-and-fast rule, apparently, unlike the rule that says a coach can only stay
with the same team for two years. The coach of my son’s shuffleboard team is on
his third year of coaching the same team.
Unlike the
rule that says every family has to contribute at least six hours of volunteer
time or the kid doesn’t play.
And unlike
the rule that says the family who has the team shuffleboard equipment for game
days is not able to sell it all on Craigslist when their kid gets kicked off
the team.
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