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Overtime: Athlete Parent Insights from Coach Moles · Let's Talk with Carl Lee

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  This is Overtime, a weekly moment of off the Cup commentary on everything from
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  sports and politics too observations about everyday life from NFL all Pro Curl Lee.
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  Welcome to overtime. Hello ladies and gentlemen, This is Curly with Let's talk
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  and I'm gonna do a quick overtime session with UH with the same guests,
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  Hunter Moles, the new director at the South Charleston Community Center and recently a
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  state championship double a head coach, and we're going to discuss one of the
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  interesting components that I have that we've we've we talked a little bit about this
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  before and then there was a news article about it as well, about parents
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  understanding their role in in their in their kids participate patient in sports. I'm
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  gonna say, like in youth sports, I think the participation, if you're
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  not coaching, should be really kind of just sitting and enjoying the time that
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  your kids playing. And I know that can be challenging when you don't play,
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  if your kid's not playing, and it's hard to keep coming to games
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  and your kid doesn't play, but you know that unfortunately that's the reality of
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  where he or she could be as you go up the educational ladder, you
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  go to middle school. I think we're having a lot of kids leaving middle
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  school sports because they're not participating. And the parents themselves may be bothered by
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  that because their kid was pretty good in youth sports and now they go to
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  middle school and they're not getting that kind of instant run. And you know,
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  we've talked and we talked about that in the in the on the Less
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  Talk program, we talked about that being a challenge when a kid doesn't play,
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  and then when they go from middle school to high school, it's even
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  a bigger challenge because now you're talking about it, you're talking about a really
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  young kid, a ninth grader trying to play with an eighth grader, and
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  the expectation is from the parent, is he ought to get in somewhere.
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  You know, football, you can't just say he should be able to get
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  in anywhere. I don't know, I'm a short soccer. Same situation basketball.
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  You could make the case, well maybe he could get in, but
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  but but the reality is is the patience and the and the growth that they
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  have to have to to get to those next levels. I'm just wondering to
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  you if you if you were trying to explain that to parents, the patience
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  and maybe even a conversation that you might want to have with your child in
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  the inability to make that transition and become that instant starter or even playing time,
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  what would you say to them as an extremely successful coach already have gone
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  through this process yourself as a player, what would you say to those parents
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  as a way of giving them some advice? All right, So the main
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  thing for me is just to keep working and understand that their huts and loves
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  to everything in life, the sun's going to come up with or without your
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  storm is going to pass eventually. Obviously, everyone scenario is their own.
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  Everything's a little different, so it's hard to put it all under Onembrella,
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  but you have to understand that you could be really good at the youth level,
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  and then naturally as you get as everyone gets bigger, maybe you don't
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  grow the same. Maybe your body's different. You know, maybe someone catches
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  up to you. That's fine, that's that's that's natural in a way,
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  But how are you going to respond to it? Is my biggest question.
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  How you respond to things is our biggest question that we try to teach we
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  lose a championship, how are you going to respond we something doesn't go your
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  way? How are you going to respond? So if you don't like how
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  something's going, the biggest questions should ask you is how are you going to
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  respond to it? Sitting around and complain that there is a complaining stage between
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  parent and kid. I understand that, but yeah, how fast can you
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  move on from it? You know? Well? And but I don't think
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  that that that discussion between parent and child should drift into into the coaching unless
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  you want to know what does he need or she needs to do? Let
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  me get more into that. And I can just speak for for me,
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  myself, my program, and my high school age right because I told you
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  middle school is very hard to coach, I think, but for high school
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  we don't. I don't think I've had one parent meeting because we tell the
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  guys we have a player parent meeting before every season. The players need to
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  come talk to us. The players need to get used to speaking for themselves,
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  coming to us saying coach, what do I need to do to play
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  more? At seven thirty? They need to come and talk to us,
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  And obviously the parent can get involved if they think, you know, we're
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  doing something we shouldn't be. But it's tough for the kid to ask that,
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  but it helps them grow, It helps us our relationship grow. Hey,
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  you know you're you are good at this, but we need your work
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  at X, Y and Z. So that's the main thing is telling the
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  kids they need to go talk to the coach. I think I do men
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  though in our meeting that if I'm telling little Johnny to go left and he
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  goes home and goes to the dinner table, and you keep telling him to
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  go right, which way, he's he gonna go. He's gonna go right.
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  He's gonna listen to you, guys before me. You're that's that's you're
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  the parent, like he's gonna he's gonna listen to you. So it doesn't
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  I mean before you, before you go any further. I want to emphasize
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  that because I want parents to understand your child will listen to you. The
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  question you have to ask yourself is what you're saying. Is what you are
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  saying, is it relevant? Is it in line with the program, the
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  coach, the structure, all of that. Because you may say something and
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  your son buys it, but it is left of the team, and then
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  that becomes a problem because sooner or later he's thinking or she's thinking this,
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  and your coaching methods and structure and everything is on the other side of that.
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  That's gonna collide. Yeah, it is, But I do think naturally,
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  I don't think it. Parents are never gonna not want to see their
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  kid be successful. Like that's obvious, right, Like they're gonna want the
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  best for their kid. They're gonna want them to play, they're gonna want
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  them to do and everyone has different one Like some of them want them to
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  score this much, some of them want them to rebound this much. That's
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  fine. I think that's natural and never gonna go away. But I do
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  think, like we keep talking about it, it's bigger than for me basketball.
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  It's bigger than basketball. There's life lessons to be taught. I think
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  if you havn't guys work hard in practice, you need to reward them with
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  game time. That is the importance of junior varsity. Everyone looks at JV
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  like it's a bad thing. Yes, everyone looks at it like, oh,
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  I'm on the JV. No, you're practicing all this time. This
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  is when you go play against other competition. We everybody dressed and played JV.
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  I think if they weren't starting on varsity. So you're telling six man
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  through nineteen played JV minutes. I want them to get game reps. That's
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  where we can see their development. We had Gio Sinko, Jeff Reynolds,
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  two guys that are seniors this year. They played JV their freshman year.
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  Now they're state champson and starters. Somebody's gonna have to There's only one basketball,
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  there's only five guys on the court. Someone's not gonna be thrilled with
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  their playing time. How are you gonna respond to it? That's the biggest
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  thing I think on the flip side of it, us as coaches have to
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  understand and I know this for a fact, I am not always correct.
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  I make mistakes too, So can you admit to your mistakes as a coach
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  and be okay with saying, hey, man, you were right or you
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  know, I should have played X, Y and Z. Moore might not
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  have to tell the parents that. You don't have to go tell the players
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  or say that. But you have to be you. You have to be
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  as a coach. You have to be coachable too, and you have to
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  keep wanting to get better because players and parents want to see that. They
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  want to see you get better. Man, I go to every coach's clinic
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  I can get to right like I go and work on my craft. I
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  watch so much basketball because I love it. Right these the players and parents,
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  they want to see that passion. They want to see that you're putting
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  your all into it. But if you're doing that as a coach, and
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  you're putting you all into it, you want to see that in return.
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  You want to say, hey, stay with me. The one game you
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  didn't get playing time because you're a guard and we were playing against a bunch
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  of big guys and we played a big man instead of you, or whatever
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  the case may be, stay with me, practice harder. So my dad
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  told me to do practice harder. So it's a it's a touchy subject right
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  now, I think for sure, but both parties can can kind of get
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  a little better at it, or all three parties from coaches, player and
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  parent. But I do think we got to encourage the players to talk to
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  their coaches at the high school level. For I mean, obviously youth and
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  middle school is different, but at the high school level, let let's let
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  the players come in and talk for themselves, and and and just try to
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  try to emphasize to playing hard, stand positive. Sometimes when you're going through
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  stuff like you're having a tough season, right, you don't get what you
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  want. That season can help you in life more than anything, more more
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  than being an All state and all that. That struggle season you think.
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  I've never I've had plenty of struggle seasons. I've had times with Mom,
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  this is I don't want to do this no more. No, you finished,
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  you started this, you finish. So I was. I was brought
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  up in that same process of you start this, you're gonna finish it,
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  right and and and to your point about having issues, there could be personal
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  issues. Yeah, there's things that could be happening in your life that's going
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  on. And the process that I had to go through with with with my
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  dad and my mom was when you go play, when you go practice,
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  when you're participating in those things, these things can't match. Like you can't
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  like you can't bring that into your football. Football is that outlet that you
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  you go do that. Now, sometimes the motivation because of frustration, anger
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  or whatever may add to it, but their their concept was. You can't
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  carry those things over in the day to day life, you know, and
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  that's not always easy. That's done. But I think if you hear it,
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  if you think about it, if you try it, I think that
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  that can be helpful for you because at least for that hour and a half
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  that you're playing, hour and a half for practicing, whatever the case may
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  be, that stuff is gone. We actually hit on that a lot during
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  finals week because Catholic is tough academically, and we talk a lot about finals
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  week. Hey, let it go for this two hour practice. You can't
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  study right now, you're already here. You might as well get the most
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  out of it. So later in the season we had a lot of talks
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  with the guys. Hey, if anybody's checked out, you don't have to
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  keep showing up. We'll still let you in the picture. I swear to
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  you. I told him this, Cross said, if you're checked out,
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  because we have some guys that don't play as much. Right they see they
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  see how much you're playing. They think because they're not playing the game,
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  they don't have a role on the team. Hey, if you're checked out,
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  it's fine, you can still take the picture with us. When we
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  win the state championship. And I was being dead serious when I told him
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  that my biggest thing, and I think the guys did do this. My
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  team did this this year. That the guys that didn't play varsity minutes,
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  they bought into practicing hard and we had great practices postseason. We you can't
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  just do it with one guy five guys. It takes everybody. It takes
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  one bad apple to bring the negativity. When the negativity comes, it's contagious
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  and then it goes to other people. We needed one through nineteen to be
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  positive, to give your best. Like you talked about, I'm already here,
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  I might as well get something out of it. And whatever you got
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  going on outside of the game. That's the beautiful, beautiful part about the
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  game is you're just going to practice as your outlet, use it as your
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  outlet. So we definitely hit on all those things and really try to make
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  ourselves as one. There's a Jay Wright quote, who used to coach at
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  Villanova, says something like everyone's role on the team is different, but you
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  know everyone's kind of the same. It has the same role or purpose or
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  something like that. I know butchered it, but it's it's something like that,
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  and we tell that a lot. You know, we're big on We
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  have a coil of the day every day that we go over, so we
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  have a lot of quotes and things like that. So you just got to
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  have the right mindset, like we talked about a little earlier. Yeah,
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  mentally you gotta be mentally tough. Yeah, And ladies and gentlemen, we're
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  gonna get out of here. But I just want to say, like I
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  wanted, I wanted this as as the ot because I wanted parents to understand
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  that playing is not the measure of the future success. Playing is the motivation
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  or not playing is the motivation to play. And if you put that motivation
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  in to play and the work ethic to play, at some point in time,
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  when that opportunity comes, you will play well. But if you spend
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  time doing nothing because you're not playing, and then that opportunity comes for you
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  to play and you're not ready, you may never get another chance. Stay
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  ready, so you never have to get ready. You have to stay ready.
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  You never have to get ready. That's a free ready. That's a
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  fact, ladies and gentlemen. I appreciate your time. This is uh Carley
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  and we're getting out of here. Thank you, Hunter, appreciate you having
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  me. Carl, no problem. The opinions expressed on this program do not
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  necessarily reflect the opinions of WVRC management, employees, or sponsors. Follow us
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  on Facebook at let's Talk Carley. Visit wchsnetwork dot com slash let's talk for more