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Parents can be a tremendous benefit to our MVHS Diablo Basketball Program by simply following simple Basketball Parental Guidelines and ideas that have been proven successful for the basketball family as a whole. The basketball family consists of not only the coaching staff and the athletes but the parents as well. Today, more than ever, basketball coaches must express to their parents what behavior is acceptable and what behavior is not acceptable.
Below are parental guidelines and ideas which the coaching staff have found beneficial to the MVHS girls basketball program as a whole from our many years of coaching and experiences. With that said, please adhere to the guidelines we have made below for the Diablo Basketball family so that we can enjoy a successful and memorable 2011-2012 MVHS Diablo Basketball season on and off the court!
 Please don't shout advice to your daughter during the game. Shout words of encouragement? Absolutely! A steady stream of technique suggestions, though, has no value and is counterproductive to the coaching staff. Your insightful tips may conflict with our coaching instruction. For example, if the coach takes a timeout and calls for your daughter to pass the ball to the short corner but the dad who is “coaching” from the stands is yelling for his daughter to shoot and the daughter shoots…the coach will view this player as unresponsive to coaching instruction and can cause her playing time or be pulled out of the game. Worse yet, it can cause the team the opportunity to execute a critical play in a close game. Additionally, this is an extremely unfair position for the parent to put their child in because the child will be pressured to follow both instructions which is impossible to do on the court. Leave the coaching where it belongs…on the team bench, not in the stands.
Please don't harass the refs. Parents that loudly harass the referees are embarrassing to the player and the team.The coaches will complain to the referees on behalf of the parents if we feel it is appropriate. When a parent makes a spectacle of themself at a game, the player is embarrassed. If the ref is being reamed by a parent for a bad call (by definition, a bad call is any decision by the ref made against the parent's child), what does the player learn? She learns that the mistake wasn't her fault. It was the result of poor officiating. This is a bad habit to get into. This bad habit can transcend to blaming his teammates as well. Sometimes a call is hard to take for whatever reason. Such times are tests of emotional control. If a player can learn to bite her lip and move on, a parent can learn to sit quietly for a moment and let the emotion pass. Learning to cope with disappointment is a valuable life skill.
Don't encourage your child to place the blame for their failures upon their own teammates. One of the benefits of playing sports is learning to accept responsibility instead of making excuses. Accepting responsibility is an extremely valuable life lesson that will ultimately shape them into fine young women of tomorrow!
Don’t put down your daughter's teammates. If you make put down remarks about her teammates who make mistakes during the game, it takes away from our team spirit. This will also put a lot of pressure on your daughter to be perfect and not be allowed to make mistakes and that’s a lot of pressure to put on her.
Don't blame the coach for your child's problems or lack of playing time. Your child's struggles to succeed are your child's problems. Let her work them out without your interference. A player has every right to ask a coach what needs to be done to earn more playing time, for example. But a parent stepping in to demand playing time and telling the coach how to coach is another thing all together and is considered off limits.
Please don't razz the other team's players. The other team's players should be considered off limits. Yelling at or deriding someone else's child is a shameful practice for an adult at a sporting event. Parents who intend to disrupt, distract or upset players exhibit the worst of poor sportsmanship.
Please don't talk bad about the coach in front of your child. The worst thing a parent can do is take pot shots at the coach, criticizing decisions, and complaining about his leadership and coaching decisions. Support the coach and stand behind his decisions.
Don’t lecture your daughter about mistakes after the game. The ride home in the car after the game is not a good time for lectures about how your daughter messed up. She already feels bad and knows about his mistakes. Learn from history, how many times have you actually had a good and constructive conversation with your daughter in the car after the game about mistakes she made? Talk to her after a “cooling period” usually later on the day or the next day. For the most part, you would have forgotten about the “talk” after the cooling off period. At the same time, don’t forget to compliment her on things she did well!
As a parent, be involved in a positive way. Attend your child's games as often as you can. Cheer for all the players on the team. Volunteer at the snack bar. Help keep our "home gym" and it's surroundings clean. Take pictures and email them to the webmaster so we can add to the photo albums. Help plan fun events or team functions for the team.
There is probably a hundred ways to be good team members and good parents at the same time. When the larger definition of the Diablo Basketball Family is working well, the experience can be wonderful for everyone involved. People who see our Diablo Basketball Family in action COLLECTIVELY AS A WHOLE will want to be a part of it. Parents looking ahead to when their child will be old enough to participate will be eager to fit in and help. This kind of teamwork perpetuates itself. Once it gets momentum, it can be quite a force. It just takes parents who care and understand what it takes to be part of something bigger than themselves and their own daughter. This is when the Diablo Basketball Family is at it's best and on fire!
In Hoops On and Off the Court,
MVHS Diablo Coaches
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