I see pros and cons both ways. Our practices were closed last year and here are the few of the reasons we decided to do so.

1) Parent need to be parent and encourage the efforts of their kids. There are coaches there to push them and try to keep their focus. Parents yelling from the sidelines at their kids during conditioning and live wrestling was at time detrimental to the kids.

2) Conflict with parent vs parent during live drills.

3) Parents contiually coming on the mat trying to coach without going through the coaching registration process.

Now after all that last year, this we look back at what transpired and realized alot of what is already stated. Parent being able to help with the moves taught at home, security of smaller kids having their parents there and our ability to control what happens in our room.

We opened practices back up and have decided to handle these issue with each individual cases.

I felt we punished all the parent by the action of a few parents.

Years past we were loose with our club handbook which lays out that the earlier mentioned actions will not be tolerated. Instead of dealing with the probelms we just covered them up by not allowing any.

It is our full expectation that the parent all will follow what we layed out in the club handbook or they will be dealt with individually.

We also offered to anyone no matter what skill level to become coaches, but most are reluctant once we tell them that we expect them to coach all the club not just their own child.

As far as coaches like Purler, I have been to a few of his two days clinics and there are all mixes of skills level and age groups. He handles a room like no one I have ever seen and keep as much control and focus than I ever realized could be possible. I try to copy what he does in his room.