Parents Share Benefits of Activities, Concerns About Fan Behavior

Of all the stakeholders in high school athletics and performing arts, parents are likely the most unique. Parents devote so much of their time to supporting their children’s participation. In addition, they often support their kids’ endeavors financially. They are also as invested emotionally as their children and coaches, but with no direct impact on the performance on the field or stage.

What do parents receive for their devotion to high school athletics? What makes the time, effort and dedication worth it?

Recently, High School Today hosted a group of 10 parents in an online meeting and asked them their perspective on what makes the high school sports and performing arts experience successful, as well as how poor fan behavior can detract from that experience.

Following are the parents who participated in High School Today’s feature:

Jim and Julie Swiderski
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Three children (one currently in high school)
Divine Savior Holy Angels High School

Dan Cunningham
Burlington, Vermont
Two current high school students
Rice Memorial High School

Joe Gordy
Graham, Texas
Two children (one currently in high school)
Graham High School

Kelly Lanham
Graham, Texas
Three children (one currently in high school)
Graham High School

Kathy Burke
Oakley, California
Three children (one currently in high school)
Freedom High School

Nat Neider
South Burlington, Vermont
Three children (two currently in high school)
Rice Memorial High School

Jim Harwood
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Three children (twins currently in high school)
Divine Savior Holy Angels High School

Janice Guzman
Rutherford, New Jersey
Two children (one currently in high school)
Rutherford High School

Kristin Marron
Rutherford, New Jersey
Three children (all three in college)
Rutherford High School

Nearly all the parents talked about how participation in high school sports and activities provided their children with meaningful relationships that will last a lifetime.

Kelly Lanham: For my boys, what they enjoyed the most was relationships. They had incredible relationships with their teammates and with their coaches. Participation also fostered an opportunity to have some relationships with people in the community that they that they might not otherwise have a relationship with, whether it was a booster, a fan, a pastor or parent of a player. When my older two kids look back on their playing days, they always talk about their relationships.

Kristin Marron: The first thing I think of is the relationships that developed amongst their teammates, their classmates, their coaches. Their teammates were kids they grew up with but weren’t necessarily in their friend group. But they learned how to be good teammates.

Jim Swiderski: Our boys were first introduced to high school athletics when they got into freshman football and being in a junior program. Over the summer leading up to their freshman year, they got to know 20-40 kids in their class. It was that comfort level of being introduced and having friends that you could lean on and rely on.

Jim Harwood: (My kids) were also lucky enough to play on varsity teams with juniors and seniors. Then when they got to be older, they got to be leaders to the younger generation coming up. That was fun for them, playing with people they may not have gotten to know if they hadn’t played that sport.

Joe Gordy: I have a daughter who plays everything, and she’s had a lot of great experiences. She had the opportunity to play volleyball with a group of seniors as a freshman and then play basketball with a different group. She had a bunch of new teammates and formed deep, lasting bonds.

Julie Swiderski: Our kids have both been the beneficiaries of someone older in the program taking them under their wings. Then as they grew up in the program, they did the same in return. I think that’s really important.

Kathy Burke: My kids have had a great experience in sports. Even when our district struggles to get coaches who are Olympians or have had a great background in their sport, they’re still usually great people. They’ve made great connections with my children. And, when they didn’t connect, as was the case for my daughter in volleyball, she was able to lean on her friends and her love of the sport to be able to continue.

The parents also saw how the specific benefits of participation helped their children during and after their time in high school.

Jim Swiderski: An obvious benefit of playing high school athletics has been their ability to be more organized. When you have two-and-a-half-hour practices, you’ve got to be able to get all your homework done, be prepared for the next day, and be able to perform at a high level, academically and athletically.

Julie Swiderski: The time management piece is huge. Our son, who’s in college now, recognized how valuable that was when he got to college. While he doesn’t play sports in college, he recognizes how easy it was for him to slide into the college academic lifestyle because of the time management principles that he had adopted in high school, through his participation in sports.

Marron: There were so many lessons. My kids went to college understanding how to balance their lives and their schedules, because when you are part of a team, you have to balance your classwork and practice. My oldest child was able to graduate college in three years and is working on her master’s now. I think a lot of this goes back to all the lessons they learned being a participant in high school sports. It taught them how to see things through and follow up with their commitments.

Dan Cunningham: There are definitely hard times in sports as well as in music. I don’t know if kids can always see it at their age, but it really is good for them. And having coaches and music teachers who have high expectations has been really wonderful.

Lanham: It also taught them a lot about success and gave them a lot of confidence in their abilities. They learned how to fail, too. There’s going to be some losses. How do you respond to them in a positive way? They learned how to compete, too. That’s an important aspect of life; learning how to win and compete, and to do it in a way you can hold your head up high. Be fair and be a good sport. Be a great teammate.

Julie Swiderski: It’s been fun to watch our daughter grow and be more confident in herself. I think sports have a lot to do with that, having some successes and failures to build on. You’re not always going to be successful at everything that you do. But you also might find success in areas that you never expected.

While participation on a high school team provided their kids with long-lasting friendships and life skills, the overall support and encouragement from their community and school leaders was also an integral part of their success.

Nat Neider: I think without adult supervision nurturing their talent, it is very difficult for the kids to have a positive experience. My daughter wants to distinguish herself; she wants to excel. And she can’t do that without the adults. That’s what’s made all the difference. It’s been a hugely positive experience.

Janice Guzman: I think we have such a sense of community in Rutherford. I’m constantly surprised by the people that come out to see my daughter play basketball, from former students, former players and teachers. (Athletic Director) Dave Frazier has set a standard of excellence. He created a model where kids feel that they should excel, but they also have responsibilities to be good people, good teammates and good role models.

Gordy: When we do pep rallies at our elementary schools, our elementary students and junior high students come to celebrate the varsity players. They get to feel like a rock star and really start to understand the responsibility they have when third-graders are calling them by name.

Julie Swiderski: Our daughter participated in AAU basketball for three years. That was a different experience than the high school experience. The goal was to win tournaments.

Jim Swiderski: The tone and tenor of the AAU program is different than what the kids get in school. The non-school teams don’t necessarily have the same social aspect. In high school, it’s nice to see all the kids come together and see the community, which is what’s developed and fostered in school athletics programs.

Lanham: We are really blessed to be in a community with incredible coaches and incredible administration across the board. It’s a smaller community with a single high school, so you get a lot of great camaraderie. As a parent, high school sports has been nothing but just an incredible positive thing in our lives.

Cunningham: The athletic director at Rice Memorial talks about how sports are really part of the community. When you are at the school in the afternoons when the sun is going down, you see all the kids participating in activities and can see how the school community really comes together.

While the parents were united on the incredible benefits their children had received from participating in education-based athletics and performing arts programs, they also were in agreement that the behavior of parents and other fans at high school sporting events has gotten worse in recent years and that changes need to be made.

Surveys have indicated that the No. 1 reason that individuals stop officiating high school sports is related to bad behavior by parents, other fans and coaches. And at times, that bad behavior escalates to situations where officials have been physically assaulted.

Our group of parents shared some of their experiences about the current landscape with regard to behavior they have seen firsthand, and many also offered suggestions on ways that these types of situations could be addressed and begin to have better atmospheres at high school sports and other activity events.

Jim Swiderski: I think the manner in which officials are treated by parents and fans in the stands is reflective of a larger degradation of respect and civility in society. It’s kind of like the Twitter-ization of high school athletics, where somebody sits behind their keyboard and writes off angry screeds to people, not recognizing that the people on the other end are human beings as well. Then they come to these games, and they think that is acceptable behavior. Since they sit in front of their TV and yell at their TV, they think somehow that is acceptable. And it’s obviously not. It’s a huge problem.

Julie Swiderski: It’s disappointing (bad behavior by parents). It takes away from the tone and tenor of the experience for high school athletes. It takes away from the whole environment for everybody who’s there for a fun evening. And it’s degrading. I think it’s especially degrading for girls who are participating in sports because it’s often about their appearance or something like that and it doesn’t help with self-esteem.

Neider: I think there are probably about four sports that are problematic – football, basketball, baseball, soccer, maybe now lacrosse. Other than that, I don’t think there’s as much of a problem (in other sports). So, it might be a little bit bigger than just parents and kids.

Harwood: There are coaches as well (causing issues), because I’ve seen many coaches tossed out of games. Why would you want to get involved in refereeing, seeing your coach or your family or your parents or your classmates riding a referee the entire game. So, I don’t blame them. In the Milwaukee area, and I’m sure it’s true everywhere, there are high schools where referees need a police escort to vehicles after games. That’s just crazy. We rarely have issues at our school because our AD takes the time to meet with all the coaches before the game, and our coaches by and large are wonderful with referees and you can see it, and parents are removed from games if they’re not respecting the officials.

Marron: I think we have to have stronger consequences. And that starts with the culture of the school. We have a zero tolerance policy with our students. And the parents and communities need to come together and agree to support that. We’re here to enjoy the sport and watch our children. And I’ve always said, there was nothing better for me than a Friday night sitting in the stands with all the people I grew up with – my parents, my sisters, my schoolmates – and then my kids are all on the field, cheering and playing football. It was just an amazing feeling of community to be a part of that, and I think some communities are losing that sense of community. We’re really supposed to be here to support the children, and what better way than to be a positive role model. The children are looking in the stands to see who’s causing the ruckus. It’s embarrassing, quite frankly, but until schools come together, it’s not going to stop.

Lanham: I think the most important thing that can be done is for the administration to take control immediately, and then set an example of that person and remove them or warn them, whatever the case may be, but take control early so things don’t escalate and get out of hand further.

Gordy: We need to be supporting our kids, whether we think it’s a good call or a bad call. We don’t want our coaches, parents, students responding. We’re going to have to teach them to be mentally tough and resilient, and fight through some of these things. I think we have to communicate to our parents is that it is hard for us to hold our kids to a standard that we don’t make. So, let’s be positive, let’s be engaged in supporting our students. We don’t need to be yelling, calling names or arguing with officials, verbally attacking people.

Guzman: In our town, they’ve been trying to encourage some of the almost college age students to go and get their ref licenses. But as a parent, I don’t know if I’d want my daughter to do that because I’ve seen it first-hand. Even with parents from our own town, sometimes, unfortunately people get worked up and they think it’s in the moment.

Burke: It really comes down to educating the parents. They need to know why they should not yell at the ref, that they are going to hurt my kid at the end of the day. Maybe educating the parents with some kind of a module like, “OK, your kid can’t play until you finish the module.” Let’s do better at training the parents before the kids participate.

Jim Swiderski: We sign a parent code of conduct, in terms of how you’re going to conduct yourself. If those words mean anything, you adhere to the code of conduct. And so, it’s not a surprise, everybody has agreed to do that. But I think some people take that more seriously than others.

Cunningham: Before every high school game, there’s a big announcement that comes from the Vermont Principals Association, reminding people to be respectful. We hear that announcement and, you think, “Really, we have to tell people that?” But I think it does help actually. I think it kind of puts it in people’s heads that that is the expectation, and the athletic directors have done a pretty good job of bringing this up as a serious issue.

Jim Swiderski: As parents, the best thing we can do is to model that behavior that we wish to see our children demonstrate. On the court, it’s no surprise when a parent is acting up in the stands and yelling at an official and berating an official to then see that parent’s child on the court use curse words, or just be questioning the referee. Behavior needs to be modeled by us as parents.

Marron: Our AD is always present (at games). And I do feel that if there was a problem, he would be the one to step in and remind parents of what is expected as far as a community and in our sporting events. We don’t really have any problems at our home games because we promote a culture of expected behaviors.

Burke: Parents need to know that those kids are learning. It’s a learning environment. This is high school sports, and everybody’s there to learn. We have Unified sports at our school. We have basketball, bowling and soccer at our school. And there are no issues like this; they are so fun to watch and gets the kids involved. My son is involved in those programs. I bring my classes over to watch all the students involved because it is really fun. This (Unified sports) is an example of why high school sports are so fun.