EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a weekly column from former sports reporter and editor Mike Bass. Bass will be contributing to The Enquirer by offering advice for sports fans, athletes and youth sports parents and coaches through a weekly Q&A. You can reach him at mbass@mikebasscoaching.com or on Twitter @SportsFanCoach1.
Parents drove Scott Stanfield out of coaching high school basketball the first time. The stress got to him, more than it did in his other line of work.
Which is saying something.
He is a retired police officer with 30 years on the job, who had to deal at times with the incomprehensible. Such as? Hearing an ER doctor say that a toddler had been sexually assaulted and knowing he could not retaliate.
“You want to go back and shoot the guy,” Stanfield says. “You see your own kid and say, ‘What freak could do this?’ After a while, you get accustomed to it. You learn to deal with it, your own way. Some guys deal with it the wrong way, abusing drugs and alcohol. It’s not an excuse.”
It’s reality. He gets it. As stressful as it was, he learned how to let it go. When the work was done, it was done.
“As a cop, you fix a problem and go on to the next thing – it’s cut-and-dried,” Stanfield says. “As a coach, I couldn’t do that. I didn’t handle that part very well.”
The details of his exit from Minnesota’s Brainerd High three years ago became a high-profile and cautionary example of parents pushing coaches to the brink.
Activities director Charlie Campbell says he and Stanfield received hundreds of notes from around the country, from current or ex-coaches similarly outraged by parents. He hoped to raise the level of conversation about this issue, but we have a long way to go.
Meanwhile, a piece of news went relatively unnoticed.
Stanfield returned to coaching.
Three. Months. Later.
Today he is head coach of Aitkin High School, not all that far from his last gig. I only stumbled upon this while researching an upcoming presentation to the Ohio School Boards Association about dealing with sports parents.
Stanfield and I recently compared notes, trying to help each other. I am grateful for the kindness and humility he showed, explaining what he will do differently this time and exploring what might help him and others.
He will not accept a repeat of last time. It was that bad.
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How bad?
The vast majority of Brainerd basketball parents were great, but two or three every year exasperated him.
Complaining about their sons’ playing time.
Insinuating he was intentionally sabotaging their kids.
Challenging his authority.
Poisoning other parents.
Embarrassing themselves and their kids.
Confronting him.
Take the time a parent charged onto the gym floor at him during practice. Stanfield had to call his old partners on the force to get the guy to leave.
Campbell tried to support him, running interference with parents after home games. On the road, Stanfield proved more vulnerable. That’s when someone went too far.
After his postgame radio show, a parent confronted Stanfield about playing time, shoving a finger in his chest, boxing him in so he could not leave.
“You have to back off,” Stanfield said.
“(Bleep) you, I’m not backing off!” the parent said.
As a police officer, he knew how to get past the guy.
As a coach, he knew he could not do that.
“Thank God, I didn’t push him, or that would be it,” Stanfield says. “Finally, I said, ‘I’m leaving.’ He followed me out the door and kept reaming me.”
Somehow, Stanfield made it out of there.
He’d had enough.
He loved the kids, loved watching them develop, cherished hearing from them years later about his positive influence. That is what mattered most, anyway. Only one of his players even went on to play Division III ball.
Sure, he wanted to win. He had a couple of 20-win seasons after moving from assistant to head coach in 2011 while still on the force. He led a 28-1 run to the 2012 big-school quarterfinals before losing to eventual state champion Apple Valley and future NBA guard Tyus Jones.
But he hated what the parents were doing to him, hated second-guessing himself instead of sleeping, hated the idea of what he might do if a parent pushed him too far, hated what his wife was hearing in the stands.
“I don’t want to be in a town,” he says, “where people hate you.”
He wanted to quit.
“We had a meeting of the staff in my office the next day,” Brainerd activities Charlie Campbell says. “I asked the assistants who wanted to step in and be coach.”
Crickets.
Stanfield and Campbell reached a compromise. Campbell would announce in an open letter that Stanfield would leave after the season – and why.
“It is hard for any of our coaches, including coach Stanfield, to find joy in this vocation,” Campbell wrote, “when met with a general dissatisfaction, anger and/or hostility from an increasing number of parents.”
Stanfield told the Brainerd Dispatch this was not about the record. He entered the season 99-66 and started 5-1 before the current five-game skid. It was about taking a break after moving from the stress of police work to the stress of coaching.
“Coaching was worse,” he told the paper. “Coaching has been way worse.
“If you win, it doesn’t matter. If you lose, it doesn’t matter. If their kid doesn’t get enough playing time -- look out.”
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Scott Stanfield was 55 years old when he left Brainerd High School. He did not plan to rush back into coaching.
He wanted to take some time to reassess what happened, to get a better sense of what parents today are facing, so he could better relate to them, and deal with them, when he coached again. Because he did want to coach again.
“The answer is,” he says, “we probably weren’t in front of them enough, to let know them know our heart.”
He knew someone at Aitkin, and the program needed help. He agreed to become an assistant at first, then took over as head coach last season. He will continue until a long-term successor can be found.
Now 59, Stanfield likes the change of scenery, enjoys being at a smaller program. Aitkin is about 30 miles northeast of Brainerd and a world apart in expectations. The Minnesota State High School League lists Brainerd’s enrollment at 1,752, Aitkin’s at 352. The parents are supportive. He wants to ensure that.
This is the challenge.
Stanfield is intent to show up as himself and let the parents see him for who he is. This is important. He will continue to focus on developing people and not just on winning. He sees himself as better prepared to handle issues. He will be open to making changes because the world is changing and so are parents.
We talked about what else might help him and other coaches – and what might have helped him at Brainerd. He appreciated the support of his AD, now an MSHSL associate director, but what if clear expectations for the parents had been established by and for the program?
This way, if a parent had inappropriately confronted Stanfield, there would have been a plan on how to respond in the moment and in the aftermath, one the parents would know and one consistent with the school’s values. No going over Stanfield’s or Campbell’s head. No backing down if a parent vowed to take a kid elsewhere.
“Getting an email from the superintendent, or someone on the board, saying, ‘We heard, we’ve got your back, we’ll continue to validate the plan,’ would have meant a lot,” Stanfield says. “If the plan is developed by more than just the AD and the coach, it’s super important.”
This is not an indictment of Brainerd, just a suggestion. Minnesota and Ohio are two of the states supporting the InSideOut Initiative trying to change the culture of interscholastic sports. Sometimes, change starts with each of us seeing opportunities. Some coaches and schools
set clear guidelines for parents. Stanfield sees this as an opportunity to get parents involved in the process.
Parents, of course, are not always the problem. Plenty of coaches have lost perspective. He does not want to be one of those.
“We coach the kids on how to play basketball,” Stanfield says, “but I think parents and coaches need to be trained also.”
Remember to email Bass at mbass@mikebasscoaching.com or reach out to him @SportsFanCoach1 on Twitter if you want to be included next week. His website is MikeBassCoaching.com.
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