The coach offers private lessons. Forty-five minutes, cash or Venmo. And the kids who take them? Funny thing they keep ending up with the best opportunities. Maybe it's a coincidence. You've stopped believing that. And now you don't know what to do with it. I'm Sammy.
This is the Hey Sammy Podcast. One letter a day, and today's is the one nobody says out loud at the field. Today: when the coach is also the salesman, and what it does to a roster.
This one's from Jason in Gilbert, Arizona. He writes: Our coach offers paid private lessons, and somehow the kids who take them seem to get the best opportunities. Maybe it's a coincidence, but it doesn't feel like one. What do I do?
Jason, let's name the structure first, because the structure is the story. A coach who sells lessons to the families he also selects from has a conflict of interest. That's not an accusation, that's just what the arrangement is, even if he's the most honest man in Arizona. He decides playing time, positions, and opportunities, and some of the families he judges are also, um, his customers. Even a good man's judgment bends a little toward the people writing him checks, even when he'd swear it doesn't. Especially when he'd swear it doesn't.
Now, your gut says the opportunities are tracking the invoices. Before you act on that, do one honest pass as a skeptic. Are the lesson kids maybe just... better? Kids who do extra work improve, and improvement earns real opportunities.
Sometimes the pattern you're seeing is effort wearing a receipt. So watch a month with clear eyes. If the lesson kids are earning it on the field, this is a different, smaller problem. But if you're watching equal players get unequal chances, and the only sorting variable is Venmo, then it's what it looks like.
So what do you actually do? Not what you're tempted to do, which is buy a lesson as an insurance policy. I understand the math: sixty dollars a month to keep your kid visible feels cheap. But look at what you'd really be buying. You'd be paying a fairness tax, and your son would eventually understand exactly what those lessons were for.
That lesson, the one about how access gets purchased, costs a lot more than sixty dollars. It's the one thing I'd refuse to teach him. Here's the cleaner path.
First, a direct question for the coach, calm and without the word lessons in it. What does my son need to show you in practices and games to earn a bigger role? Get the answer on the record. Then help your kid do exactly those things, loudly and visibly. You're making merit undeniable, which is the best antidote to soft corruption there is. If the goalposts move, if he does the things and the things stop mattering, you've run your experiment.
Document it in your head, stay pleasant, and start looking at other programs for next season. And if you're up for one more step, this belongs to the club, not just the coach. Directors write the rules coaches sell under. A quiet note asking whether the club has a policy on coaches selling lessons to their own roster is a fair question. You may find out other families have been asking it too. They usually have.
And a quiet word about the other families. Because you're not the only one seeing it. Resist the urge to organize the bleachers into a resistance movement. Group grievances leak, and leaks land on kids. But one or two careful conversations, just comparing notes, um, that's fair diligence. If three families see the same pattern, the club question stops being yours alone. Numbers make polite questions much harder to wave away.
One last thing, about your son, because he's watching this too. Whatever you decide, don't hand him the cynicism. He doesn't need to know the machinery yet. He needs to know effort is worth it, because over a whole life, it is.
Rigged rooms exist. The answer to them has always been being too good to ignore and knowing when to change rooms. You're teaching both halves this season. Your move this week is that one question to the coach: What does he need to show you to earn more? Say it exactly like that, and remember the answer.
Okay, that's the show. If something at your club doesn't smell right, run it past me: hey@heysammy.com. Sometimes it helps just to hear, no, you're not imagining it.
