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Under the warm summer sun, hundreds of kids in brightly colored uniforms charged up and down soccer pitches in North Mankato last Saturday during Mankato United Soccer Club’s annual SoccerFest. 

On some of the fields of play, youth soccer teams from all over southern Minnesota competed against each other, while on other pitches, players engaged in practice drills kicking goals into the nets. 

Officials’ whistles pierce the air as kids make their plays and coaches direct their teams, while the players’ biggest fans — their parents — cheer from the touchlines.

These parents are mostly positive and encouraging as they cheer and shout, but officials with Mankato United Soccer say it hasn’t always been this way. 

“Last two years, we lost two good coaches because [of] the pressure coming from the parents about the playing time and about over-coaching the players from the touchline,” said Hisham Sorour, who is the director of coaching with Mankato United Soccer. 

When parents start crossing the line from being supportive to becoming critical, “That’s [when] that unhappy atmosphere starts building up,” said Sorour, 56, an experienced player and coach who has been with Mankato United since 2019.

There’s a troubling trend within youth sports of coaches, referees and other game officials saying they're facing more pressure, harsh criticism and conflict than ever before, and much of it is coming from parents. 

It’s causing an increasing number of them to quit, as youth and high school sports clubs, teams, leagues say they’re having a more difficult time recruiting and retaining coaches.

A case in point — a successful and popular high school girls hockey coach in New Ulm recently announced he was quitting, and not because of the kids. He told the New Ulm Journal that he’d, “just grown tired of some of the parental behavior.”

Parental pressure and unruly behavior isn’t a new problem in youth sports, but some coaches believe it’s more visible in the age of social media where families can now stream sporting events and there’s easier ways to get involved. There’s potential for disputes to be dragged out onto online forums rather than handled in-person. 

Rob Pipal, 69,  is vice president of Mankato United Soccer’s Competitive League and he coached the sport for almost 50 years. When his daughter played for the club, Pipal admits he crossed the line himself — not as a coach, but as a parent. 

“I was yelling at her at a game, I wasn’t coaching, but I was yelling from a parent’s perspective, yelling, ‘Hey do this. Hey, do that. You gotta do this!,’” Pipal said. “And then after the game, she said, ‘Dad, shut up. Let me play. If I want to know some information, you can tell me when we go home. But, don’t do that.’”

But, Pipal says it was a lesson learned and brought some perspective. 

“I think some of that has gotten a little lost,” he said. “All the yelling really doesn’t fix anything. You just have to encourage and be very supportive and be very positive, and things go well for most kids.”

Other parents haven’t gotten the message. Coaches in every corner of the state and in many different sports say they’re getting an earful from parents complaining about their kids’ playing time, how practices are run, game strategies, and especially when their child athlete gets cut from a top team.

Northfield hockey coach Chris Walker, 44,  says he’s seen and heard it all, including parents screaming and swearing at him and referees from the stands. During one away game this season, the other side noticed. 

“Somebody was in the stands or something and heard these parents being loud, obnoxious, [and] rude,” Walker said. “And called someone in our association and said, ‘Hey, you know your parents on this team are out of hand.’”

Walker says he still loves coaching, but with some parents so focused on winning and making their kid a star player, he feels the things that should matter more, like skill development, team building and fair play, are getting lost in the shuffle. 

“I want [kids] to have fun, and I want all of them to come back next year,” he said. “And then we have the parents watching the scoreboard, watching, and it just, I feel like it creates a mixed message.”

Some coaches who started in the 1990s say it’s harder now being a coach, and the expectations parents have for their kids are also different. Paul Clark, 50, an assistant varsity football coach in Pillager, said there are parents spending thousands of dollars on youth sports, training camps and competitive leagues. 

“The type of athlete we have now compared to when I was in high school, I don’t know if I would be able to compete if I was in high school compared to these high school kids,” Clark said. “It brings that, ‘I spent all this money, and now I expect my kid to perform,’ and so it brings a challenge.”

These challenges, Clark said, and the long hours away from home, give coaches and officials little reason to stay, especially when they are paid so little, or not at all, as many coaches are volunteers. When they’ve had enough, many choose to quit, and Clark said that’s understandable if there’s not much support and respect within the school or organization to retain them.

“Nobody likes to get their reputation tarnished, no one likes to have people question them,” Clark said. “The pressures of having to spend time away from their own family, their own life to go to all these camps and be in the weight room for a couple hours a day and take time away from your summer, off-season, all that adds up.

Even those paid a stipend, “If you look at it per hour, it’s peanuts,” Clark told MPR News. “It ain’t worth it to them.”

Clark said he’s now found a balance after 27 years of coaching, and he focuses on the parents who do support him. It works for him. 

“I try to remember that the vast majority, for every one parent that’s disgruntled, there’s probably 20 that are extremely supportive,” he said. “They want what’s best for their kid. They  understand that there’s going to be some struggles. They understand that it’s not easy. If it was easy, everyone would be a star.”

With many of their members reporting frustration from these escalating pressures and conflicts, the Minnesota State High School Coaches Association is gathering data on coaching turnover to figure out what’s driving coaches to quit. Rick Ringeisen, executive director of the Minnesota State High School Coaches Association, said they hope the data paints a clearer picture. 

“Coaches feel more pressure today than they ever had before, and they feel that it's coming from lots of different directions,” Ringeisen said. “It’s from their players, it’s from the parents, it's from the administration, and not all of them feel they're being treated fairly.”

Once the results are released in a few weeks, Ringeisen says they plan to share the data with the Minnesota State High School League among other partners and sports groups. 

“Parents, their primary interest is their child as it should be, which is exactly how we want it to be,” Ringeisen said. “Coaches, they have to look out for the entire team. And those two ideologies or feelings are not always harmonious with one another, and that can be difficult to navigate.”

It’s become such a big problem across the country, that one of the opening seminar sessions at the upcoming National High School Athletic Coaches Association annual conference next weekend is “Dealing with Difficult Parents.”

Despite the negativity this past season, Northfield hockey coach Chris Walker says he still finds support from other parents who do appreciate him — and they’ve let him know that their kids do too. It is in these moments that he finds joy in what he does. 

A parent let him know that a pep talk Walker had with their child and inviting him to play goalie for a team of older kids made a huge difference. Walker said they won a game and tied the other.

“In a big, long text at the end of the year from a dad, he says, ‘I want you to know that you hit at just the right time to prove to him that he’s good and to make him still love hockey,’” Walker said. “It was probably one of the coolest messages I’ve ever gotten from a parent.”

Many youth sports organizations are being proactive, too. After losing those two coaches because of parental behavior, Mankato United Soccer established a new code of conduct for  this season. Everyone signed it: the kids, the coaches — and the parents, said Hisham Sorour, director of coaching. He says the goal is to set boundaries, protect and support the players and the coaches, and keep the games fun. 

“You’re coming in to enjoy your son or your daughter,” Sorour said. “Enjoy [the game]. If you have a coaching point, let’s do it your way back home when you’re [on] a car ride.”

So far it seems to be working. Sorour says his coaches are telling him that this has been one of the most enjoyable and least stressful seasons in years. 

Hannah Yang

Author

Schools and youth sports organizations say the unruly parent problem is getting worse, with some coaches saying they're increasingly being harassed and even threatened by parents, making it more difficult to keep and recruit coaches.

‘Loud, obnoxious, rude:’ Unruly parents and uneven playing fields for coaches cause some to quit

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