Coach , 

I’ve watched thousands of presentations over the last few years, so I am always looking for the unique, and the title “Parents are not the enemy” jumped out at me and left me wanting to investigate more.

I started with the coach Drew Sanders. I found out that he’s the only coach in the history of Vandegrift High School (TX) because he began the program their 14 years ago. His early teams had to lift weights at another high school as their facilities were completed.

In 2022, he led his team to the Texas UIL Class 6A Division II state championship game. The didn’t come out on top but they've come a long way.

He has worked hard to build the culture, and he begins his clinic by sharing a story of a former player who he was ready to give up on. His leadership council let him know that Troy was going through a lot. His parents were dealing with some major issues and werent in the picture. Coach found out that Troy was living in his car. Through the incident, coach realized that developing young people must be intentional, not incidental. He shares Troy’s story and what he learned from the experience in this video (click on images for video):

Video: Intentional vs. Incidental

Coach goes on to share the three keys to building culture. Those involve leading your current team, your community, and your current parent group. Parents can be difficult group, so buy-in from them is very important if you want to lead a program long term and have success like Coach Sanders has.

Video: 3 Keys to Culture

While we meet and will experience those parents that who may be adverserial not matter what, we want our relationships with our players’ parents to be positive. The days of “I only talk with players” are over.  The truth is that we have a major role in the experience of not only the player but also his family. Having gone through the high school experience with our kidsrecently, I know that to be very true. That experience affected us as much as it did our kids, and we had both positive and negative experiences much of wish the coaches had an impact on. Coach Sanders shares his philosophy on parent relationships here:

Video: Parents are not the Enemy

Communities and culture has change. You must deal with parents. Coach Sanders saud, ”We engage them on our terms. We respond rather than react.” What you do can really affect a family as a coach inieither positive or negatives ways. It’s all in how you handle it. Coach Sanders explains his philosophy here:

Video: Parent & Coach Interaction

The two talks that Coach Sanders gave were full of great ideas that help build your culture with your team, parents, and community. As the world changes, we must be able to adapt and operate in a way that helps move forward.  

Thank you to Coach Sanders for sharing his approach and giving ideas that can be implemented in any program.

Always be growing!

Coach Grabowski

P.S. These two clinic talka are available together here.