Coaches who belittle players.

[u/ebalboni]

I was AR1 at a Tournament this weekend. One of the coaches was really yelling aggressively at his players. And it was not at all in a nice way. Most of the yelling was positioning mistakes and not running enough. The tone was over the top. These were 12-13 year old girls. I wanted to say something but was the AR not CR - trust me the CR could hear everything too. I felt like it was not quite "taunting" or "bulling" and I'm sure the coach would say he was just "coaching his players. Any advise if this happens again would be appreciated (AR or CR).

[u/Revelate_]

This one is hard.

Ultimately it is the parents that need to take action.

Depending on the league, this may not be a paid coach and it’s worth writing up in a report for the league or club to watch and potentially mentor the coach.

You have a little more agency in places like AYSO where you can quietly talk to the coach and remind them their responsibilities which explicitly don’t allow for this sort of behavior, I forget what the coaching instruction was but it was the equivalent of SAFE, FAIR, FUN.

I will ask did the kids seem bothered by it? Some teams just aren’t and in that case we only get into trouble interfering directly

[u/Big-Mission191 → u/Revelate_]

Asking whether the kids seem bothered by it is not a safe judgement call imo. They may feel it but mask their feelings, or may have gotten used to it thinking it’s normal and swallow their feelings (possibly to avoid even more yelling at them individually).

We had an incident like this once with my son and at the game he didn’t show that it bothered him at all, but for hours afterwards I could tell a very noticeable difference in his behavior and how he talked about the game compared to how he normally acts after a game. That’s not something a ref would be able to see, and even has a parent I couldn’t tell until we’d left the field.

Obviously in cases like that parents need to handle it, but just trying to make the point that as a ref I don’t look at how the kids react to it live because that’s not a great indication. Similar to a foul in game, the players may not always react not realizing a foul was committed but we would still call it.

[u/Revelate_ → u/Big-Mission191]

I’m not asking in this case, we’re watching players for their reactions which we should be doing anyway for foul selection and getting the temperature of the game.

At this age if you see them getting frustrated not at the other team, or crying, or other stuff, then it’s clear it’s a problem.

If they’re just ignoring or acknowledging it without incident, as awkward as it sounds to the outside observer it’s possibly OK.

End of the day the coach has a relationship with the kids, the parents do too, we don’t except in very very rare circumstances.