Have you ever wondered about the fathers or mothers who have coached their sons or daughters in high school sports? You can see many examples without going any distance from your home. Have you ever thought about what consequences come into play when you have that situation?
There is always the stereotypical parent who drives his child so hard to be a success to the point that the young athlete develops a hatred for the game. There is also the parent who puts his child into the lineup regardless of how poorly that child plays the given sport. You can no doubt thing of a few more cases in just a few minutes of thought if the urge grabs you.
One special case in the local sports scene was the combination of Emily Fitzgerald, who recently graduated from Tyrone Area High School. A four-year letterwinner in the Lady Eagles’ tennis program, who was selected to receive the Tennis Award at the recent Tyrone Area Senior Recognition Night as the outstanding senior tennis player, Emily was coached by her father, Rev. Charles Fitzgerald.
“It’s fun, it was a lot of fun to play on the tennis team coached by my father,” explained Emily. “It wasn’t as hard as some people might think. My teammates see some similarities between me and my father and it makes them laugh to see how similar we are and how we play tennis.”
You have seen or heard of cases where the parent whether he or she is a coach or not does a lot of yelling at their children and at other kids on the team. Emily and her father see the experience as a continuation of a previous and well-rooted relationship.
“We have been doing things together for a long time in our lives before tennis,” said Rev. Fitzgerald, who is pastor of the Wesley United Methodist Church in Tyrone. “What was nice about Emily is that she understood from the ground up the responsibility there is in coaching for me. She was able to do things that other kids would never have thought about. She stayed after matches to help me clean up the courts and pick up trash and that was very nice. She played for four years and it was such a nice easy relationship. Emily instinctively did things that I didn’t even have to ask.”
Many coach/parent-child relationships in sports are punctuated either by the coach/parent behaving in one of two distinct attitudes-either making the athlete/son/daughter work much harder that others on the team, or giving them breaks that the player did not earn.
“When we stepped on that court, it was just coach and player,” replied Rev. Fitzgerald. “I would say the same things to her that I would to any of the other girls. Tennis is very hard to coach because you have three girls in action at the same time, three courts, three players. Girls are very aware of who you are talking to, how you are talking to them and how long you are talking to them. I don’t mean to be stereotypical, but girls will notice that more than boys. Over nine years coaching, I have learned that and try to be fair. When game days came, in my mind, it was the same for everyone.”
One advantage of having a coaches child playing the same sport is that after hearing about the hows and whys and whats in detail at home from the dinner table and through to bedtime, often the athlete/coaches child will take on a role of a leader, a coach on the field. Taken to the opposite limit, a coach’s child may have to put up with the parent raving on and on about the play of other teammates or be forced to listen even more often to the coaches’ pet peeves.
“Some things, I didn’t have to say to Emily,” explained Rev. Fitzgerald, “because she would hear it so much at home, ‘like I sure wish people would play net more’ and ‘we need to serve faster.’ Well she would hear that all day at home so I didn’t need to say that to her at the matches. She had already heard me say that.”
. A student graduates and goes on with higher education, jobs, etc. while coaches continue on at the scholastic level. Is there life after graduation for the parent coach? Of course in many cases, all they have to do is wait a few years for younger children to come up through the grades and take the place of older siblings. Eventually however, all the coach’s children will have gone on to post-graduate endeavors.
“It is going to be different in the fall,” said Rev. Fitzgerald. “I am really going to miss having Emily there. There’s no question about it. The only good thing about that is that she’s only over at Juniata. I’m sure sometime during that 13-week tennis season that we’ll get together. As a matter of fact when we play at Huntingdon, the match is played on the Juniata tennis courts. I’m sure if she doesn’t have a class, Emily will be there. I will miss her of course, that’s my daughter, although over the nine years I’ve coached at Tyrone, I have missed a lot of kids. These kids do become in a sense, part of your family.”
