What if this happened to your son? Am I overreacting?
I’m posting this because I genuinely want some perspective from other parents, especially parents of high school athletes. I’m trying to figure out whether I’m looking at this the wrong way or if what happened with my son really is something worth being concerned about.
My son recently tried out for his high school golf team. He was excited about it and took the tryout seriously. His school has one of the biggest athletic programs in the state which he also was excited to be apart of. What happened during those tryouts, though, ended up being very different from what I expected…
My son’s tryout consisted of the players playing 9 holes, with the kids keeping track of each other’s scores. So essentially, they were responsible for recording the score of the person they were playing with. My son was paired with two boys that played on the team last year. These two boys were telling each others what scores to put on their cards and encouraged my son to do the same. My son refused because he wanted to keep his score honestly. On several holes they would hit it to
The green and pick the ball up without putting and giving the other person their score. Then proceeded to tell my son that “this was just a free round of golf” and “everyone would make the team anyway”. The WORST part, one of those boys vaped during the entire tryout!
Then, a week or so goes by and they get called into the coaches room and he informs them he got word someone cheated so they would be having a second tryout. So my son being the honest person he is goes to the coaches room and lets him know the boys he was paired with cheated and his response was “I find that hard to believe since I’ve seen them play” and you can only imagine how upset he was the coach basically told him “I don’t believe you”. So after he tells me this I was livid and contacted the coach about everything that happened. He assured me he was handling it but also told me he felt 90% of golf is honesty.. (obviously not)
Fast forward to the second tryout my son hears if he’s the one that told, he’ll get beat up and he also felt like he got special treatment from the coach. Now I feel terrible for being labeled the “snitch” and getting targeted.
The cherry on top of this all is he didn’t make the team but the boys that cheated and vaped did.
That’s where I’m struggling. I completely understand that my son may not have been good enough to make the team, and I don’t want to assume that his score was the only factor in the coaches’ decisions. But I’m having a hard time with the idea that he was put in a situation where he was encouraged to cheat, chose not to, and then watched kids who did make the team. Also, I know I shouldn’t have got involved.
I’m really looking for perspective from parents of athletes or any parent . Am I overreacting for wanting to take this to someone higher up?