What Do Parents Really Want? How to Turn Families Into Partners

Host Suzy Kolber opened this NextUp 2026 session with her own story as a sports parent. She coached her daughter in park and rec and travel softball in Connecticut. When her daughter wanted more competition, Suzy, then a single mom with a demanding job, started driving more than an hour each way to Rhode Island so she could play for an elite travel team.

Then high school arrived. Her daughter wanted to play volleyball and softball, but the volleyball coaches made it clear that missing practice for a Saturday travel softball game meant sitting out that week. It crushed her love of softball. The good news is that she fell in love with volleyball. She became her high school’s setter, her team won a state title her junior year and went undefeated her senior year, and she earned All-State honors. Today she plays club volleyball at Yale.

Along the way, Suzy learned how much good coaching and good communication shape a family’s experience. That set up a panel on how to work with parents:

• Erika Badan, former CEO of Barstool Sports, co-founder of Mule Media, PLL board member, and a sports mom
• David Jervis, Head of Youth at Red Bulls New York, whose programs serve more than 30,000 families
• Lance Smith, CEO of NextLevel Sports, which serves more than 100,000 athletes across 29 states

1. Align expectations from day one

David calls families “partners,” because he sees youth sports as a partnership between coach and parent. In his experience, most parents start out wanting three simple things: for their kids to have fun, to learn, and to be safe.

Things tend to go off the rails once families move into competitive play. That’s when fear of missing out kicks in and parents start comparing themselves with what other families are doing. David’s goal is to stop that before it starts by teaching parents the club’s philosophy as soon as they join.

Erika added that part of the job is helping parents keep perspective. Many parents struggle to let their kids face hard moments, so sports has become one of the few places kids learn to lose, sit on the bench, deal with pain, or feel frustrated. Those are the same lessons that help later in life. As a CEO, she said she’d rather hire the kid who scrapped their way up through sports than the one whose dad calls on their behalf.

What to do:

• Explain your program’s philosophy to every family before the season starts.
• Be clear about what your program is and isn’t, especially at competitive levels.
• Help parents see losing, bench time, and setbacks as part of growing up.

2. Protect your coaches and draw clear lines

NextLevel Sports takes a different approach to coaching. It employs more than 6,000 high school and college athletes, and every team in the organization is coached by one of them. Lance believes that gives older athletes a way to pass on what they’ve learned to younger kids in their own community.

In that model, parents act as a team’s “general manager.” They help organize the kindergarteners or second graders so the young coaches can focus on coaching.

Lance is clear about who comes first. His rule for the past 15 years has been athletes first: the young kids, then the high school and college coaches, and parents last. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about parents. He knows they’re the ones paying. But when a parent challenges one of his young coaches, the coach is backed every time. Lance calls himself the “bulletproof vest.”

He even gives his site directors a tool to enforce it. Programs cost about $250 to $350, and he tells each site director to think of that amount as cash in their pocket. If a parent crosses the line with staff, athletes, or the program, the director can hand that money back as a refund and ask them to leave. Lance will back the decision, and that family doesn’t come back.

His broader point: create open lines of communication, but also draw boundaries. Offer the olive branch as many times as feels right, then hold the line, and tell families upfront where that line is. Sometimes it’s okay to tell a parent this isn’t the right place for them.

What to do:

• Write down how parents are expected to treat coaches and staff, and share it at registration.
• Make sure coaches, especially young ones, know you’ll back them in a conflict.
• Give site leaders clear authority to remove a family when needed.
• Train customer service staff on where the boundaries are.

3. Teach parents that farther isn’t better

Suzy asked a question many parents will recognize. Families say they want more development and less travel, but then they see a team with “elite” in its name and want in.

David said many families believe the farther you travel, the better the competition. Over the past 20 years, the focus has shifted to bigger tournaments farther from home, and sometimes teams travel just to play clubs from their own backyard. In soccer, U.S. Soccer is now pushing to make competition more local. David still sees value in travel for the social side, like Lance’s kids’ great experience at a tournament overseas. But he believes clubs have a duty to tell parents the truth: you don’t need a three-hour flight to get the best development.

He also offered a better way to measure success. It isn’t winning at 11 or 12. It’s whether kids are still playing at 15 or 16. Many kids quit around 12 or 13, and David believes much of that comes from how competitive their sport becomes. Even at the Red Bulls, which has one of MLS’s youngest first teams with an average age of about 22, only a small share of players go pro. That’s why his staff spends hours helping parents set realistic expectations.

Lance described the pressure behind all this as consumerism. When families pay and travel, they start acting like customers. If Starbucks gets your latte wrong, they just make another one. You can’t do that with a kid’s season. So parents escalate, especially when they’re on their third straight weekend in a budget hotel chasing a championship. NextLevel Sports avoids that by staying local and focusing on what it calls “the best youth sports experience,” not the most competitive one.

What to do:

• Look at your travel schedule, and ask whether each trip truly helps development.
• Find strong local competition before booking far-off tournaments.
• Measure success by how many kids keep playing, not just wins.
• Tell parents plainly what the odds of playing in college or pro really are.

4. Communicate early, often, and for each kind of parent

So how do you treat parents as partners without handing them your program? Erika, who has built businesses with big customer bases, sees it as a communication challenge. How often you reach out, how, and what you say all matter.

She gave a candid picture of the sports parent group chat: a lot of venting that goes nowhere. And honestly, she said, parents have reasons to complain. They sit in long pickup lines with tired, cranky kids, and when a kid doesn’t get playing time, the parent often takes the blame. Her fix is to give parents a real place to be heard. That could be regular office hours any parent can attend, or something like the moms’ night her son’s football coach’s wife hosts. Events like that help parents get to know the staff and feel seen.

She also suggested thinking about parents the way a marketer thinks about customers. There’s the intense parent at every practice who tries to coach from the sidelines. There’s the parent who’s always five minutes late and checked out. There are working parents and stay-at-home parents. If you tailor your communication to each type, you’ll cut down on a lot of friction.

Can you communicate too much? All three panelists answered the same way: never, not with parents. The key is being proactive. Lance gave the example of weather. If there’s a chance of rain, NextLevel Sports tells families 48 hours ahead so nobody is caught off guard. In his view, following through on what you promise is the best way to prove your expertise.

What to do:

• Set up regular office hours or informal events where parents can meet coaches.
• Identify your most common parent types, and adjust how you communicate with each.
• Send updates before families need to ask, like weather, schedule changes, and standings.
• Follow through on everything you say you’ll do.

5. Build a feedback loop, and act on it fast

Lance asked the operators in the room how many survey their parents. About half raised their hands. His view is that most conflict with parents comes from a gap between what they expect and what you offer, and the only way to close that gap is to ask. He recommends tracking a Net Promoter Score, or NPS, a simple survey that asks how likely families are to recommend you. Giving parents a voice helps them feel heard, and you never know what’s going on at home that day.

David shared the step-by-step process the Red Bulls use every season:

1. Virtual open house. Anyone can join to learn about the program before signing up.
2. Registration. Families sign up after the open house.
3. Onboarding. Every family gets an orientation before the season starts, whether it’s a team, camp, or clinic.
4. Mid-season check-in. Staff connect with every family halfway through.
5. End-of-season assessment. Every player gets a review, and any team moves are shared early so no one is surprised weeks later.
6. Final survey. Families give feedback on the season.

The hard part, David said, isn’t collecting feedback. It’s following up on every piece of it. His team has found that reaching out within 24 to 48 hours keeps small problems small. Waiting a week makes them bigger.

Both David and Lance urged leaders to pick up the phone. Parents often sound much harsher in email than they do in conversation. A five- to 10-minute call, or 30 minutes for a tough one, will often calm things down. Lance estimates that four out of five times, the parent will back off.

David added a tip for busy staff. A few years ago, all of this was manual. Now there are tools, including AI, that pull feedback into one system and automatically flag low ratings so issues get handled right away.

What to do:

• Send a short survey at least once a season, and consider tracking NPS.
• Build check-ins into your season: before it starts, midway, and at the end.
• Respond to concerns within 24 to 48 hours.
• Call parents when there’s conflict instead of trading emails.
• Use software to collect feedback and flag problems automatically.

6. Keep it fun, for parents too

To wrap up, each panelist shared one action leaders can take right away, and then Suzy asked how much they emphasize fun.

Erika reminded the room not to assume parents know what they’re doing. Youth sports can be intimidating, especially for first-time sports parents, so start from that place. She also believes parents may be having the least fun of anyone involved. If you can bring some fun to their experience, beyond just winning, that’s where you really win.

David stressed that parents need to be partners, not people you keep at arm’s length. Parents spend far more time with their kids than coaches do, so you need them on your side. He added that sports shouldn’t feel like a job for kids or parents. After school, families want a release. If it isn’t fun for the kids, the parents, and the coaches, they won’t come back.

Lance said sports should be fun, emotional, and meaningful. Until kids tell their parents they want to get serious, the focus should be on a great experience. He also said he loves it when kids cry at the end of a season. Whether it’s tears of joy or disappointment, it shows they cared, and that’s what sports, and life, are all about.

Your parent partnership checklist

Pick two or three of these to start this season.

• Share your program’s philosophy with every family before the season
• Write a parent code of conduct, and explain how you’ll enforce it
• Let coaches know you’ll back them in conflicts
• Review your travel schedule, and look for strong local competition
• Host regular office hours or informal parent events
• Send proactive updates on weather, schedules, and changes
• Add onboarding, mid-season, and end-of-season check-ins
• Survey families every season, and respond within 48 hours
• Call parents during conflicts instead of emailing
• Find one way to make the season more fun for parents