PITTSBURGH — Dana Petruska has been a high school coach for 37 years. She has won more than 500 games, a state championship as recently as 2018 and a Pennsylvania coach of the year award by state sports writers.
This year she had a frustrating year by her standards, and yet they went 18-9, were co-section title winners, made it to the quarterfinals of the WPIAL and played in the state playoffs.
That would be a banner year for most programs, but not for the program she has established.
She is retiring from coaching high school basketball, though, and not because she can't coach anymore. She is in good health, she clearly knows what she is doing, she has a long established track record of success and many former players consider her a mentor, a friend, even a mother figure.
She is retiring despite the fact that she is a self-proclaimed basketball junkie who lives and loves the sport and loves coaching. Her son, Jimmy, in fact, is a really successful college women's coach who has built St. Vincent into one of the best Division III programs in the region.
She is retiring for the same reason so many youth/high school coaches leave the profession — parents.
More accurately, it is the nutty, helicopter, overbearing, unrealistic, entitled, wacko parents who have no ability to deal in reality and are delusional about their kids' ability who are increasingly zapping the joy out of coaching.
Petruska, like every high school coach and just about every youth coach, isn't doing it for the money. High school coaches generally make $6,000-$10,000 a year for what is more than a full-time job when you track hours.
And I guarantee that if you divided that by the hours they put in and all the other extra things they spend money for their players, most of them are losing money coaching.
Most youth coaches are volunteers or make a very modest stipend that covers some of their expenses. I can tell you from experience as an AAU basketball coach for a lot of years, I have never had a season where I break even, much less finish in the black.
Coaches coach because they want to help young people and be a positive influence. They do it because they love the sports they are coaching, they have a competitive itch to scratch and because they enjoy the art of building a group of players every year and getting them to come together for one common goal.
Most of all, though, they do it for the kids they are coaching. They want to help them achieve success both on and off the field/court/rink. They do it because some coach or teacher somewhere along the way helped them become who they are and they want to give back.
Increasingly, however, it has become really difficult for good people to want to coach. Why should they? Yeah, they love the kids and want to be a positive influence and give back, but what do they get in return?
Ungrateful parents questioning everything they do. School administrators who won't support them. Parents yelling at them. Parents starting rumors about them.
Petruska was interviewed by Chris Harlan from the Tribune-Review, and her quotes said it all.
"I had parents screaming at me from the bleachers this year," Petruska told Harlan. "Usually I'm pretty thick-skinned, but I'm thinking to myself, 'I bust my (butt) every single day to have this team be successful — including your daughters — and you sit up there and don't see what I see every day in practice.'
"A parent screaming at me from the bleachers? I said, 'I'm done with this.' "
What in the world could a parent sitting in the stands possibly be yelling at a coach who has won 500 games and been coaching for 37 years that she doesn't already know or hasn't already heard? Also, how mortified must the kids be that their parents are screaming at the coach?
This is mild to some of the nutty things I hear about or have witnessed parents doing at youth basketball games. I am not saying all parents are nutty — most are sane, normal and rational — but the number of overbearing, micromanaging unrealistic ones is growing rapidly.
Some coaches need to be fired or removed from being around kids for obvious reasons, but the overwhelming majority are good people doing a really tough job for very little more than the satisfaction of mentoring kids. They are a part of the solution to what ails most communities, not a part of the problem.
Petruska's other quote to Harlan, though, was the money quote about what the actual problem is with out-of-control sports parents:
"I've been accused of showing favoritism toward certain kids," she said. "I do because those are the kids who bust their (butts) every day. Some of the kids, especially lately, just feel so entitled to playing time. It wears you down, and I'm getting old."
Entitlement is the heart of the matter. Mommy and daddy have done everything in their power to micromanage their lives and keep them from ever having to compete for something.
The result is they become entitled people who think because they show up every day — regardless of what they actually do when they get there — they are supposed to get every raise, every promotion and be treated like royalty. And when they don't, they throw a temper tantrum and quit and go somewhere else — and then quit again somewhere else.
Then they realize eventually that mommy and daddy aren't there to fix it anymore and they are lost.
Petruska is right about the fact that coaches show favoritism, too. They sure do — they favor the players who work the hardest and give them the best chance to win games.
That's a part of it, too, because if they don't win enough, they get replaced.
The easiest way to not win enough is to bow to pressure from parents and play kids who haven't earned the right or aren't good enough to play. It is a harsh reality of sports and life that competition makes everyone better, and not everyone is capable of competing at a high level in whatever activity they choose.
Parents want coaches to play their kids — who aren't good enough — and also expect them to win. You can't have it both ways. Either it is competitive and winning matters, or it isn't and everyone gets a trophy.
The funny thing is most kids, based on my experience, know what level they are and where they fit on the team, and most accept their roles. It is their parents who refuse to allow them to work hard and earn their spot, and as a result it ruins the experience.
The saddest thing about Petruska's story and so many like it is that an area where we need our best and brightest — coaching/teaching/mentoring — just lost another one of the good ones. There are also a lot of kids who lost out on the opportunity to play for someone who clearly cares deeply about them and their development.
I'm not sure this is ever going to change, but it needs to. We need to stop allowing a small but growing group of unrealistic, entitled parents to drive good people like Petruska out of the coaching profession, because their job is an important and necessary one.
