Not all parents of kids who play sports are created equal.
Some will help with carpool, fetch ice packs when needed and cheer appropriately. Others will yell at the ref, keep tabs on their kid’s playing time and insult the other players … or even their own child.
You can guess which type of sports parent Kylie Kelce prefers.
If the high school field hockey coach, “Not Gonna Lie” podcaster and mom of four were to talk to problematic sports parents, she would tell them: “Sit down.”
In the greenroom before her appearance on TODAY on Jan. 30, Kelce elaborates on her statement.
“The coaches are there for a reason, right? They’re there because they know how to mentor kids, or they are experts in the sport, or hopefully both,” she tell TODAY.com. “But they’re in that position for a reason, and so you should let them coach.”
Kelce, who is partnering with Dove and the company’s new Super Bowl ad about bringing joy and confidence to girls in sports, says that negative parent commentary has become so prevalent that it can be difficult to find referees for youth sports.
“It’s so hard to get officials for sports nowadays because of the parents and their feedback,” she shares. “There’s only going to be so many calls that are going to be right and are going to be wrong. Hopefully it’s split fairly even and we go with it, but there’s not instant replay in youth soccer. So I think we can just sit down. We can calm down.”
If you want to discuss your child’s performance, Kelce suggests doing so at home after the game. On the field, however, she reiterates, “Let their coach be their coach.”
Chatting with Savannah Guthrie in the studio, Kelce admitted that not every coach is perfect for every game.
“I always feel bad for the girls who get me when I’m pregnant,” she said on air. “I’m mean when I’m pregnant.”
She added, “I try my best to be a happy medium of serious and tough … We hope that (the athletes) come out and not only have fun playing, but then also get to compete and enjoy the sport and enjoy it with their teammates.”
Kelce jokes that as a field hockey coach, she doesn’t have to deal with many problematic parents because the sport “is not so common, and specifically not so common with the dads. So they just sit there and they’re like, ‘I don’t know how to yell at this, because I don’t quite know the rules yet.'”
