Baseball · Issue No. 21
One Year Later: Disappointment Still Belongs to the Athlete
Week of September 14, 2026
ONE YEAR LATER: Of everything we've published, this is the one coach Chafin says he wishes more parents heard before a tough tryout, not after one.
A 40-year high school coach, MLB scout, and Team USA talent evaluator has a simple rule he's built his career around, and it cuts directly against a very common parenting instinct: when a young player faces disappointment — a bad tryout, a demotion, getting cut — that disappointment belongs to the athlete. Not the parent.
It's a natural impulse for a parent to absorb a kid's disappointment as their own, to get angry on their behalf, to march up to a coach demanding an explanation, or to quietly start building a case for why the decision was unfair. According to this veteran evaluator, that impulse — however well-intentioned — usually does more harm than good. A kid who's allowed to actually sit with disappointment, process it, and figure out what to do about it is building a skill that matters far beyond baseball. A kid whose parent immediately steps in to fix it, relitigate it, or absorb the emotion on their behalf doesn't get the chance to build that same resilience.
This connects to something he calls being a "professional appreciator" — a role he thinks parents are far better suited for than the roles many drift into instead, like unofficial assistant coach or advocate-in-chief. A professional appreciator shows up, watches, celebrates effort and improvement, and lets the actual coaching, correcting, and disappointment-processing happen between the player and the coaching staff. It sounds passive. In his experience, it's actually one of the harder roles to hold, because it requires resisting the urge to intervene every time things go wrong for your own kid.
None of this means a parent should ignore a genuinely bad coaching situation or stay silent about real problems. It means the ordinary disappointments of a competitive sport — the demotions, the tough tryouts, the games where a kid didn't perform — are exactly the moments meant to build the resilience that makes an athlete, and a person, more capable later. Absorbing that disappointment on a kid's behalf, however lovingly intended, quietly takes that opportunity away from them.
From an interview with Coach Bruce "Butch" Chafin, 40-year high school coach and MLB scout.
This piece ran in PPA Pro Issue No. 21, alongside a camp spotlight and trainer pick for every sport. Subscribe free.