Adjusting to college can be very difficult. I think the parents have as much difficulty adjusting to college baseball as do their sons. I’m sure each college is different but let me share some of the differences I had to adjust to and maybe give you some ideas as what you can expect. First off I stayed very involved with my son during his college years. Some parents had longer distances and sacrificed much more that we did to stay involved --- while some parents never showed up at all. I might add that the players didn't seem to mind if the parents were there or not.
We had to plan our days off well ahead of time to make the home week-end games. We missed all mid week games --- too far to travel. We would listen to the mid week games on the internet and were able to catch a few games on CSS TV.
Travel: Home games were at least 6 hours away and depending on traffic, could be as much as 8 hours. Many items stayed packed all season long.
Fans: Most of the time the fans don’t know who you are so you hear some pretty cruel things about your son. I had to get used to the fact that the team belonged to the fans --- not the parents and the players. I was just a visitor. I did meet some fans that remain my friends today.
Other Parents: They are in the same boat as you but many are not happy campers. Their son was the star player in high school and suddenly he is on the bench. This happens in high school too but it seems more pronounced in college. Some parents handle this very well and some don’t.
Information: What little information you get tends to leave you in the dark as to what is really going on with the team. No parent newsletters.
Away games: Some parents would make the trip to away games and their son didn’t make the travel list. Pretty sad to see the parents drive hundreds of miles and not even see their son. Away games can be way far away (great distance).
Free time: If you want to stay busy between games you need to develop a transportable hobby. I like photography and would take my laptop and work with digital baseball photographs. Video cameras were prohibited in our ball park.
Hotel/Motel: We reserved rooms for the whole season at an extended stay hotel. College towns tend to have events that sell out the motels. Some parents would purchase condos or houses during the time their son was in college and then sell after he graduated. Most said it was a good investment. While they were investing in re-sellable property, I was looking for cheap gas and food coupons.
It is definitely an adjustment and the rewards can be great. The highs are higher and the lows are lower. Thank goodness the players have developed into young men and can handle it on their own. They even seem to have time to console the frustrated parents ---
Fungo
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