Conflict of Interest
A few thoughts on unknowingly getting tangled in the youth sports web.
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“How the hell am I going to manage?” It’s a common complaint for parents of one multi-sport kid. It’s nightmare-inducing for parents of multiple multi-sport kids. I’m sure many of you feel me, right?
A common solution is to assume the team manager role, where, if you’re lucky, you’ll have some schedule sway. Unfortunately, the team manager role too often resembles a full-time job, depending on the sport and organizational infrastructure. And there are no guarantees. But if it means you can request your daughter’s basketball practice be at 6:30 instead of 6:00—so maybe she has time to change out of her softball uniform at home instead of in the car between practices—then maybe it’s worth it. The free labor of managing a team in exchange for the possibility of a preferential schedule seems like a fair trade.
But what starts out with an innocent-enough objective—and gosh, maybe some of you suckers do this team parent work out of the goodness of your hearts—can morph into much more.
For many parents, there’s more at play when it comes to volunteering, whether by design or osmosis, says Jean Linscott, co-author of What is the Goal? The Truth About the Youth Sports Industry. Linscott, a clinical psychologist, co-authored the book with her husband, Ken Rouff, as a vessel to expose how youth sports suck your wallet, time, and soul. Based on their experience raising three soccer players, their lessons run the gamut—from the "tournification" of youth sports (money grab) to ID camps (another money grab) to the wild salaries of Directors of Coaching (DoCs) in urban areas.
All of What is the Goal? is worth a read, but the most lingering aspect for me is how entrenched conflicts of interest are in youth sports. Some are overt.
There are the basic conflicts of interest—more of a sucking up, really. Maybe it’s hogging time with the coach, inviting them to golf, talking up your kid to the coach, or telling them how they should be in this or that position. This is Cringe Parent Behavior 101.
Then there’s the subconscious stuff. And that’s where the parent mindset can shift.
“We will do what it takes to please the coach unless the conflicts become larger and larger. It starts small—an hour here or there on a weekend. Set up some cones? Okay,” Linscott said. “But then it can get bigger. You never know how much your decision to say yes or no will impact your child.”
As a serial parent volunteer, I have slowly succumbed to a youth sports climate that has mastered the art of sucking you in. Need help collecting team funds? Sure, I'll be a volunteer board member and neglect every other aspect of my life. It must be super fun and not at all like being a board member of a Fortune 500 company.
The unconscious, no-harm, wanting to be involved in your kid’s life aspect can be a beautiful thing. But what often comes with it is a sense of entitlement, even if it’s just a sliver. Maybe we simply feel a duty to help, or the club mandates it. Then, when tryouts roll around, there may be a sense of entitlement that your kid belongs on a higher team. And if your kid is a tweener, maybe the club automatically elevates them because you have been a reliable volunteer board member. I don’t think there’s anything dire about clubs looking at the complete picture and accounting for parental/guardian involvement when selecting kids on the fence.
But where it gets extra tricky—and truly falls back into the overt conflict-of-interest bucket—are the additives. The coach offering private lessons on the side. I mean, how synchronous to throw them an extra $100 a week and check the “my kid is working outside of regular practice” box. Talk about efficiently improving their standing within the team.
And if you decline the lessons, what if your kid loses their starting spot to one of the families that said yes? The lessons may seem harmless, and many stem from wanting to support a coach, but it’s still a major conflict of interest.
One of the fascinating sub-themes in What is the Goal? is the lack of regulation in youth sports. Coaches have every right to a side hustle, but what would make more sense is to have a pool of available coaches for lessons and have your current coach recommend someone who is not them based on the skill needed. In the case of soccer, one coach might be better with speed and agility, while another can help with finishing. But it would have to be a club-wide agreement—otherwise, it could just be coaches greasing each other.
One of the most obvious forms of conflict of interest, according to Rouff, is holiday gifting. While it might be unintentional, it’s easy to spend big. Maybe you’re doing it because you genuinely love the coach and know they would appreciate it. But it can balloon in a hurry.
“Why every youth sports club in America hasn’t adopted a rule that you can’t give a coach a gift of more than $5 is mystifying to us,” Rouff said. “You got courtside seats to an NBA game? That might help my kid get a little more playing time.”
Rouff and Linscott acknowledge that the majority of parents and coaches are inherently decent humans. But organizational structure often brings out the worst. “There are situations parents are put into that are highly problematic and that could impact your child,” Rouff says.
I wish I could swoop in with some grand list of fixes. Rouff is certainly on to something with regulations to quell overt favoritism. The thing is, there is no clear solution while youth sports continue to climb the revenue ladder and travel sports only become more monstrous.
All of this angling, whether intentional or a byproduct, is a preview of the real world. But it would be nice to preserve the sanctity of youth sports—to feel like everyone is on an even playing field. How we do that? Who the hell knows?
Your ideas are very welcome.
My daughter’s rec soccer coach is such a gem that we kept her in rec throughout her entire childhood. He’s been doing it so long that he coached the dad of one of our girls. He turned 80 this year, and he has this great perspective and a calm, warm presence with the girls. I was talking with him one day and he told me a story about how he organized his own youth baseball team when he was a child in the 50s. He recruited the boys from school, convinced a local business to donate money for the jerseys, and communicated with other neighborhood kids to build a schedule. My jaw hit the ground. I immediately began comparing it to my son’s youth baseball experience which has been wildly expensive and, at times, infantilizing. It made me sad that, in ramping all of this up, we’ve taken something from them too. His experience was remarkable because it was rare, but if parents didn’t do all of this extra organizing, coaching, schmoozing, fundraising etc etc etc, would kids really stop playing? Or would they just stop playing this overly-managed, semi professional version of their sports? It’s not a rhetorical question. The challenges facing our kids (social-emotional, etc) are real and there are a hundred less healthy things vying for their attention. Are we doing all of this out of fear that, if we didn’t, they wouldn’t choose a healthy alternative? And are we ok with continuing to exert that kind of control (which we know has its own costs)?