Chef, same experience here over the past two summers. So, here is my piddly little rant:
The Asst HS coach, who I use to be partner with in the summer program, is a great rah rah, at-a-boy type coach. Has shown a few red flags already, with the main one now being, the kids can't play for any other summer team without his permission. My kid missed that last few games of summer due to a leg injury and is sitting out the fall to rehab. Son has gone out to a few fall practices to observe and stay apart of the team while he is injured. This team is by far is under talented when it comes to entering certain tourny's, but understand they enter them for the experience. To show poorly in every pool game, in the tourny's they've entered, does not do much for the kids confidence, understandably. But, for the Coach to come back form a recent tourny and then brag about finishing in a certain position, post it on their face book page and pump the kids up like they achieved a great milestone, IMO, does more harm than good. Most of these kids don't understand how hard it is to go on to the next level, and to fill their heads with false accomplishments is, well, just wrong.
My son, who is not paying in the Fall, rehabbing a leg injury, questioned a few of his teammates about their finishing position, which caused some heated discussion about which games count and which ones don't when claiming a position. My explanation to my son was that it doesn't matter if you don't make it out of pool play. Consolation games are just that, consolation games. Most tournaments don't post finishing positions, except for the top 3, and the final rounds of 16 and fewer. I have never seen a large tourny post finishers 30+. If you don't finish in the top 10, it just means that you need to examine your weak areas. practice more and work a little harder.
His teammates did not like the fact that he looked up the definition of consolation and showed it to them...hehe.
I am not sure why a coach would do this. Everyone that has been on the tourny circuit laughs at this. Most of these kids on this team have not played in the big exposure tourny's, some of the younger more talented kids have. I am pretty sure it is just me with a different coaching philosophy, but to me it seems that kids are being pumped up with the old "everyone gets a trophy" hot air mentality only to get the wind knocked out of them later when the reality of recruiting comes around!
Sorry, rant over.....for now!