As a former provincial and recreational sports coach and a soccer parent, Dr. Peter Crocker knows a thing or two about the influence adults can have on young athletes.

And being a professor of kinesiology and associate member of psychology at the University of B.C. — where his primary area of research investigates stress, coping, and emotion in adolescent and high-performance athlete — Crocker is acutely aware of the athlete’s spike in anxiety levels when parents pile on the pressure before, during and after an event.

A great deal of Crocker’s research over the last 25 to 30 years has studied how young athletes cope with stress and what the main sources of that stress are.

Parental involvement, he attests, is right up there among the top contributors.

“Parents can create demands, which is not necessarily bad,� said Crocker. “But sometimes it can be destructive if it’s always negative and particularly unrealistic. A young athlete will eventually internalize these standards, turn them into their own experiences and try to achieve them.

“The problem is, sport almost always puts up obstacles when it comes to meeting and surpassing the athlete’s own and other people’s expectations of him or her.�

Such obstacles, according to Crocker, could be injuries or just really good opponents.

But when parents start to focus too much on the outcome, in terms of measuring success, “it can be destructive,� Crocker explained.

“If the outcome of the game or event is the gauge, then you’ll have a whole lot of children failing in their heads, because, in most sports, there’s a winner and a loser.

“And when parents also turn their focus to officials and coaching from the side, it becomes a major stressor for the young athlete.�

The fallout from the parental stress factor can have far-reaching and damaging effects in terms of a child’s long-term development as an athlete and a person.

“Their performance and enjoyment of the sport is at stake,� said Crocker. “Children learn so much from sport and a negative influence has the potential to seriously restrict that learning experience.�

Stress is an inherent part of sport and of life, said Crocker.

“If you’re striving to get better in life and in sport, you’re going to face challenges and often have to become better to get to another level. I know it’s difficult. As a parent, I had to remove myself to 300 yards away to watch my son play soccer. But sometimes we have to learn to be quiet and discipline ourselves.�

Parents have earned the right to get involved, that goes without saying, according to Crocker.

But it always has to be in the form of encouragement and displays of excitement.

“If they lose, let the child handle it and be supportive when they need it. Certainly don’t be talking about what they need to be doing to be better, especially right after the event,� he said.

“You have to let kids discover the sport for themselves and let them problem-solve.�