Parents huddle up!

This has been a great year and now it has come down to the championship weekend. Some of your teams have been fortunate enough to be still playing now and we would like to say congrats to those teams on your accomplishment.

At the end of the day only one team will have earned the right to be called champions and no matter what you do or how hard you train your kids you have no control of the winning or losing…trust me you don’t.

But there is one thing that you can control…

That one thing is crowd participation. You can come to the game and participate by cheering and celebrating in your child’s achievements. You have no idea how much that means to your players.

B2C What are you talking about?

Glad you asked!

Example:

Ticker Lions: They turn every game into a party. Between their announcer and their enthusiastic parents that don’t even come close to sitting down. They all have on Tucker paraphernalia or green shirts so that they can show their kids the support they deserve.

Riverdale Blackhawks: Their parents do jumping jacks every time their kids score a touchdown. They also probably had the most memorable moment in youth sports last week as the parents made a line to the top of Tara Stadium and started singing their version of Drake song (I just want to be successful), they started singeing I just want to be a Blackhawks….wow!

Central DeKalb Jaguars: Every week when you visit Wade Walker Park you can see the parents decked out in paraphernalia yelling “Welcome to the U”.

Don’t let this moment pass you up parents; this might be the only time you ever get to the championship ever! I was fortunate enough to play football at the youth, high school and college level. All that time I played football I only went to one championship and it was in youth football and I still remember that one till this day. Our parents bought white towels and had chants they yelled out in supports. They swung the towels in circle every time a big play happened. We ended up winning that game but what I remember most is that great environment that was created to play in by our parents

Intros

Come up with a creative team introduction. Whether you have you kids walking down the stands. Walking through the smoke. One of the most creative ideas is what the NC Eagles Red do, they bought wood planks for each kid and as they walk to the field they chant “Yea we know you scared we bring that wood”.

The North Henry Tigers last year in the Franks Ski Bowl had the kids come out running through the smoke. All it took was a couple of smoke bombs and a cup to hold them in place…20 bucks. I know you all can put your money together for that and please don’t act like you don’t know where to get fireworks. Just notify the police of what you are doing and you should be fine

Chants

Come up with whatever chants you want, they are all creative but remember to stay respectful to the kids. Just think about how you would react if someone said something ugly about your kids.

Cheering

No matter what the score is keep cheering for your kids. A game is not over until the final whistle. Ask the Fairburn parents of the 14U team. They were playing a game where they were down by three touchdowns going into halftime. They eventually came back and won that game 38-36. If you stop cheering your kids will think you have given up, which means to a child that you have given up on them for the game…don’t be that parent. Keep cheering and shouting positive words of encouragement till the end

Paraphernalia

There is no reason that you should not have some of your teams paraphernalia on…I am so serious. Lets say for example they ran out of the shirts with the team logos on it. You can still go to Wal-Mart and buy a shirt that is your team color. There is absolutely no excuse for this one parents.

Attendance

All parents should be in attendance unless you cannot get off from the job or you have a serious personal issue going on.

And when that final whistle blows…

If you win

If they win your child will have a huge smile on their face, celebrate their victory with them

If you lose

If your child takes a loss they will more than likely have tears in their eyes because even though you might not know but to them this game meant everything to them. I would love to hear this chant. We are so proud of you, were so proud of you! Give them a hug and let them know how proud you are.

Remember this…

There was a great moment last year when a team lost on the last play of the game of the championship. The kids had tears in their eyes as they walked up to accept their second place trophy and all was quite. A dad suddenly yelled out of the stands “pick your heads up, put that flag in the air and wave it”. The kids followed the directions of the dad and he started chanting by himself. WE ARE PROUD OF YOU, WERE SO PROUD OF YOU! Other parents started chanting with him, soon the whole stadium was chanting along. The kid that was holding the flag waved it high and they accepted their trophies. The reality of sports parallel with life so much. Sometime you can try all you can, prepare as much as you need to and you still come up short of a victory. The dad wasn’t teaching his kids how to lose but how to accept a loss when it happens. He later walked up to his son, gave him a hug, and told him that he was proud of him for giving his best effort.

With all that said…

If you are a parent and you think this is lame, then your mind set is not where it needs to be. This is the championship weekend. I want to see parents towels waving, signs in the air, chanting, team t-shirt wearing, yelling words of encouragement. I want to see you giving your kid the best you have. You should be determined that the parents from the other team will not cheer louder or be more creative than you when it comes to supporting your child.

Now let me hear you say go parents loud and proud on three,

1, 2, 3

GO PARENTS!