The Noah Parent

The list of great parents supporting the Skyline program continues to grow.  These people are awesome.  They stay at tournaments long after their kid finished wrestling to support the other kids on the team.  They go out of their way to give other kids rides.  They come in early and stay late to make sure the hospitality room or the concession stand or the mats are set up and running properly.  They donate personal money or find sponsors.  They put up with my craziness.  As the youth program continues to grow more and more of these great parents are popping up.

I want to relate this growth to another common theme I keep finding when I interview people that witnessed a normal wrestling program evolve into a top flight program.  I'm told that each of these programs had a lot of parent support.  A lot of parents in the stands.  Financial backing and/or an extensive volunteer program.  Positive peer pressure from experienced families towards the new families joining the program to let them know what it takes to stay at that high level.  But there is another common parent theme.

I call it the Noah Parent.  Noah built an arc.  His whole family was in on it but most other people thought he was crazy.  It took a LOT of work and dedication.  He ended up being right.

Every time I talk to someone about a program going from good to great they tell me there was a lot of parent support.  Then they usually add, "But there was this one set of parents."  And they talk about them.  They were leaders.  They did a lot behind the scenes.  But the biggest thing I see about these parents is that, at first, they come off as a little crazy.  They tell the new parents in a confident way what it takes and why.  The stuff they suggest is not normal.

But they end up being right.  Their kid does those things and ends up being really successful.  Then the other parents find out the Noah Parent isn't so crazy and they want to get on the boat. 

If you are one of those parents that really care about the success of Skyline wrestling, start by making sure your kid is doing those crazy things that will help them be successful.  Then you can start being a Noah Parent.