Meet Craig of Glendale. He’s the father of 8-year-old football
player Trenton, and stars with his son on Bravo’s new reality
series
”
Sports Kids, Moms and Dads,
”
which follows the lives of five different athletic families.
Meet Craig of Glendale. He’s the father of 8-year-old football player Trenton, and stars with his son on Bravo’s new reality series “Sports Kids, Moms and Dads,” which follows the lives of five different athletic families.
There is no better introduction to Craig than what actually comes out of his mouth in the first few minutes of the series premiere: “I believe that we choose our parents. And I believe that Trenton chose me because he wanted to be a football player.”
This is the man’s justification for putting little Trenton, who appears to have just recently acquired his two front teeth, through a seven-day-a-week football training regimen which, in addition to practices, includes running sand dunes and stairs, working out with a quarterback and visiting a chiropractor once a week.
Whatever helps you sleep at night, man.
I guess the one redeeming quality about Craig is that he’s not in denial that he’s living through his son.
“The major dream in my life that’s unfulfilled is not playing in the NFL,” he says as he drives off to line the football fields for an adult football league he runs. “I’m hoping that the dream that I didn’t fulfill will come to life with Trenton.”
I have mixed emotions about this new show, which airs at 10pm on Wednesdays. On one hand, I think I’ve found my new favorite reality show. These parents’ behavior and perspectives on their children and sports makes for a lot of jaw-dropping and unintentionally comedic moments. On the other hand, these situations are real, and therefore, very sad. I can’t help but feel bad for the kids, especially the ones like Trenton, who are too young to have a real opinion on anything besides what kind of peanut butter they like. The way I see it, these kids are going to grow up to either 1) totally resent their parents, 2) totally resent their sport or 3) be totally unadjusted to society. Or maybe all three.
What I would like to see are these young athletes escape having any of the above occur.
It’s really too bad that overbearing sports parents are such a widespread problem that they warrant a television show. But such is the state of youth sports in this country. Either way, I strongly encourage you to watch this show, if for no other reason than it will teach you how not to behave as a sports parent.
On a local level, I have to give praise to the parents of Gilroy. From what I’ve observed during the few months I’ve been here, you have all been pretty well-behaved. But I have observed some pretty bad parental behavior elsewhere. When I was working in Chicago, I heard some real horror stories from coaches. A coach of one high-profile high school basketball program had a player’s father attempting to sabotage the college basketball hopes of another player on the team by reminding college coaches who showed up at games that she’d already had two major knee surgeries. He would then suggest the coach check out his daughter instead.
Of course, this sleazy method only backfired on his daughter. Coaches who might have been interested didn’t recruit her because they didn’t want to deal with the father. Unfortunately, it hurt the daughter, who was actually a nice kid and an innocent bystander.
To any parents who are tempted to use unsavory methods to help their child get ahead in sports, just remember, what goes around comes around.
With school winding down and youth summer sports heating up, there’s bound to be more parent-coached teams that have less – or no – oversight from school officials or governing bodies. If you’re planning on coaching sports and are looking for some more guidance on how to deal with the politics that accompany youth sports or are just interested in learning about how to be a better coach, there are a few organizations with which you may want to familiarize yourself: The National Alliance for Youth Sports (www.nays.org) and the Positive Coaching Alliance (www.positivecoach.org).
After all, you don’t want to end up on a reality TV show.
