The Minnesota Legislature is considering a bill to protect sports coaches from passionate parents.

Under the current system, a Minnesota high school athletic coach can be fired solely based on parental complaint. The bill proposes the dismissal of a coach must be based on other factors and not negative parental input.

A coach is responsible for the performance of the entire team while parents’ concerns are purely for their children’s well-being and their individual performance. Because their main concern is for their own child, many parents’ perspectives are too narrow. This creates a situation where some parents can influence other parents to complain, which affects whether or not a coach is retained or fired.

This bill will allow athletic directors and administrators the flexibility to hire and fire coaches based on many criteria, as they couldn’t do in the past. In the past five years, 110 hockey coaches across Minnesota left their coaching position and 35 percent of those departures were because of parental complaints, according to Mike MacMillan, executive director of the Minnesota Hockey Coaches Association.

This gives the administration and athletic directors the leeway to make decisions not solely reliant on parent requests, making the coaching staff the best it can be. Giving the coaches more freedom to make decisions based on the team as a whole, rather than cater to the individual student athlete.

Minnesota is currently the only state discussing  this issue. The bill was introduced by a previous Minnesota cross country coach.

One benefit of this legislation is that it will force student athletes to stand up for themselves instead of relying on their parents. This increases the likelihood of students being independent long after high school.

Overprotective parents are only doing a disservice to their children. By sheltering their children from difficult situations they need to learn to deal with, parents are not allowing their children to learn how to be independent in society.

Students need to become self-sufficient at a reasonable age. They need to learn to rely on themselves more than others to do their job for them. By forcing student athletes to talk to their coaches on their own they learn how to become self-reliant.

While it is important this bill is supported in the upcoming legislative discussion, high schoolers can do something now. If students have a problem with a coach, take it up with them, and be a responsible young adult.