Youth sports can be an emotional experience. The physical activity of the kids can often spill onto the sidelines and into the stands and create strong reactions in coaches and parents. Each year 2.5 million people volunteer their time to help coach youth sports. These coaches are just one vehicle that provide organized youth athletics an existence. As parents, we will not always agree with a coach’s decision. However, it is important to recognize that the coach’s role is to make decisions for the team first and a player second. Also, we need to understand that most players are not aware of any problem until we, as parents, bring it to their attention. For parents, it is important to separate their child’s sports development from game time emotions. For this reason, we adopted the “24 HOUR RULE” which simply states, that coaches will not discuss a game, or situation in a game, until at least 24 hours after the fact.

Parents/guardians are not allowed to confront a coach, team, player, board member, administrator, or league official to discuss any “negative” game or practice situation(s) with the coaching, Board of Directors or administration until at least 24 hours has passed from the completion of the game or practice. A confrontation shall consist of any conversation, which elevated from a normal speaking tone and demeanor to one which involves yelling, profanity, or derogatory comments toward said coach, team, player, board member, administrator or league official. Basketball is a quick paced, emotional sport. Physical battles and tough calls among other things can spill on to the bench and tends to create strong reactions from coaches and parents. The intense emotional aspect of basketball is one of the reasons it makes exciting entertainment, but it is important to have a ‘cooling off’ period so that emotions do not cloud judgment.
If parents respect the 24 hour rule, their concerns are MORE likely to be fully addressed in a reasonable discussion. More importantly, the kid’s enjoyment of a game won’t be marred by an ill-timed confrontation. The intent of this rule is to move an emotional and confrontational discussion away from the presence of the players, and to allow the parties to ‘cool off’, compose themselves, and put the incident or situation that occurred in the game in perspective before meeting to discuss it.

Violation of the 24 hour rule policy will result in Parent being suspended for 7 calendar days.