But I got pretty frustrated at one point when, due to a long story I won't take the time to type out, my son ended up on a football team with a bunch of kids who had all been on the same team the 2-3 years before. So the coach knew all the kids, knew what positions they played, had a set rotation, and was frustrated when this new kid joined.

In elementary school - winning is nice, but the charter and bylaws of the league state that every kid gets to play a set amount of plays (not including special teams) every game. And my son was playing maybe a quarter of that - so I brought it up to the coach. When nothing changed the next week, I emailed the league commissioner. My son was a pretty average player, nothing special but not a liability. But ended up sitting because the coach was mad at the circumstances that got him put on the team. He didn't mind using him as a body during practice, but he rarely put him in the games.

As a funny aside - after on loss early in the season, the coach went on a rant. They were leading into the 4th quarter, and then lost. He was telling the kids that they got tired because not everyone had come to the game and they needed them to be committed to be there. He was doing this loudly enough for the parents to hear, who were standing around the huddled kids getting ready to go home. I'm sure the message was for us as much as the kids. In some ways, he had a point. This was the 3rd game, maybe, and for the first 3 games they'd had 3-4 kids just not show for one reason or another. So they had limited subs in the Aug heat at the end of the game.

So - the coach goes on this rant for a few minutes. When he stops, there is silence as all of these kids are kind of looking at their shoes, unsure what to say after this coach just told them all they were tired. Then my son pipes up, "Not me. I'm not tired. I hardly played at all!" He wasn't intending to call out the coach as much as he wanted the coach to know that he wasn't tired and could play more - but the look on the coach's face as my son essentially called him out was freaking hilarious.