As a club, Melrose United would like to encourage all our spectators to follow a few guidelines while watching Melrose United games. We want our players to make their own decisions, make their own mistakes, and learn on their own.

Difference between encouragement and coaching from the sideline
During a game, your youth athlete should be listening to instructions from their coaches. If parents/spectators start telling the players what to do from the sidelines, they are undermining the coach’s authority and putting the athlete in a difficult situation; who are they supposed to listen to?

Praise players for what they do right. Don’t focus on what they did wrong.
Remember that youth sports focuses on learning the fundamentals of their given sport. Youth athletes are still learning and are going to make mistakes. Identifying and correcting these mistakes, ideally as teaching points in practice, is how players improve.  Focus on the player’s and the team’s successes, they will be hard enough on themselves for making mistakes without bringing additional attention to what they did wrong.

Try to put yourself in your child’s shoes
It is very difficult to concentrate, perform at your best and enjoy playing a game if you are potentially receiving conflicting directions from your coach on one sideline and spectators on the other sideline.  Think about how this might impact you if you were trying and improve at a new hobby or other activity and there were multiple people giving you instructions while you were trying to concentrate.

Please do not criticize the referee
Referees are people and will make mistakes.  Please respect the referee’s decisions and encourage others to do the same.