UConn Huskies coach Geno Auriemma once talked about the parents of his players, diving deep on how to differentiate the supportive ones from the crazy kind. In a video posted by the “What Drives Winning” channel on YouTube back in Jan. 2018, coach Auriemma was being interviewed and sparked discussions on his coaching career, the experience he has gained and the style of mentoring through the years.
In one instance of the interview, host Bred Ledbetter asked Auriemma how he can tell whether or not a certain parent is overstepping boundaries in terms of being supportive of their child, to being a negative factor on the stands. Auriemma then offered two ways to know this, one that is more subtle and the other that is more apparent.
“How can you tell? Well, if you take your eyes off what’s going on on the court and just look up in the stands, the guys that are going crazy; and you go, ‘Whose father is that?,’ and now it’s also, ‘Whose mother’s that?’ Everybody in there, there would be 400 coaches watching, you know, an AAU game, and everybody will go, ‘That’s that kid’s family,’ and everybody knows, you feel bad for the kid. So that’s an obvious way, that they’re nuts in the stands,” he explained. (6:20)
Auriemma goes on to speak about how the other major path is “the way the kid responds to what happens on the floor.” Over-the-top displays are made each time something goes against the player. “They pout, they make faces, they yell at the refs.”, Auriemma said. “You know, a kid on their team misses a pass and they b*tch and moan. You know that they get taken out of the game and they go to the end of the bench, they get a towel, put it on their head like unless they’re playing and scoring, they don’t care,” Auriemma added.
Throughout his lengthy tenure with the Huskies program, now spanning nearly four decades since he took over in 1985, Auriemma has produced some of the best players the women’s game has to offer, including Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, and Breanna Stewart. The now 71-year-old will enter his 41st year at the helm of the UConn program in the upcoming 2025-26 college hoops season.
Geno Auriemma Says He Runs The UConn Huskies Program Like A Catholic School
Later on his interview with Bred Ledbetter of What Drives Winning, Geno Auriemma revealed a coaching style that he has stuck with since the start of his UConn Huskies journey that has helped him throughout his tenure. Auriemma then asserted that this is still how he coaches in the present time, as it is a system that has worked well with both players and their parents.
“I said, ‘I’m going to run this program like a Catholic school program because that’s the only thing I knew.’ That’s where I went to school, that’s where I coached. I coached girls in high school, Catholic high school, I coached boys. And we could do that. We could say, ‘If you don’t do this, you’re not playing.’ It was easy, and they listened, and you didn’t get any calls from parents because they knew,” he shared. (7:55)
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