Psychology of Tryouts: Part IV (It’s All about the Parents)
As I described in Part I, Part II, and Part III of this four-part series on Meeting the Challenges of Tryouts, my focus is on what athletes can do to make their tryout experiences as enjoyable and successful as possible. So far, I wrote about the psychological challenges for young athletes and how they can overcome them, and what their coaches and the coaches who run the tryouts can do to lessen the stress of tryouts. This final article in the series will focus on the all-important role that parents play in how young athletes react to and perform in tryouts.
Every parent wants their young athletes to find success at tryouts, whether making a new competitive team, a higher-level league, or some other step up in their sports development. And certainly, the intentions of the vast majority of parents come from a good place of wanting their children to have fun, learn essential life skills, and to build self-esteem and resilience. But let’s be realistic. Many of these parents can’t help but get caught up in the current toxic youth sports culture where results and early success mean everything and early failure is seen as a death sentence for their children’s athletic futures. Moreover, there are a not-insignificant number of parents who care way too much about their kids’ sports and REALLY NEED them to make it to the next level from the tryouts. The sad reality is that these latter parents often hurt their children’s efforts in the short run by causing them to be so stressed that they choke at the tryouts. These parents also hurt their kids’ future athletic prospects by sucking the fun out of playing and making their sport a truly stressful experience.
Though the attitudes of the coaches involved in the tryouts play a role in your children’s experience there, you have the greatest impact over how they feel about and how they do in their tryouts. So, assuming you want to your young athletes to have fun at their tryouts, learn from them no matter the outcome, and increase their chances of making the higher team or league (a safe assumption, I would think), here are a few things you can do to help make those goals a reality.
