I
itstallgirl
actually, i think hockey parents are the worst. i've never see anything quite like it in all my travels.
hockey is more of my expertise than gymnastics. i'm originally from a farm town of 500 in western ontario, no stop lights, no restaurant, just an ice rink and a little plaque with the names of all the NHL players from town (and a liquor store... it is canada ha ha). now i'm living down in the states where hockey has become a sport that wealthy suburban and mountain town kids can play because of the cost of equipment ($1,000 easily to start out with low level stuff for a kid) ice time (hundreds an hour plus you get it at 6 am). there was a huge boom of ice hockey south of the normal states (MN, upstate NY, NE etc) in the 90s because of the NHL. this is when you saw the boom of the "hockey mom" (apparently they're all over texas now.... TEXAS?? lol). they're in canada, particularly in toronto, the surrounding suburbs, vancouver, etc. you don't see if in the small towns though. that's where everyone plays and there's so much talent that no one is special because of it so you generally have more humble guys. equipment is hand me down and with each wee town having a public rink it's accessible to all the kids. no one sends their kids to the hockey camps that go all summer for thousands of dollars, in these small towns kids play baseball and other free outdoor sports in the summer.
from my experience with gym you see the same thing as hockey. a lot of the crazy parents have a lot of time to dote on their child's sport and they're more affluent and have pumped a TON of money in, private lessons, gym/ice time, equipment, camps, etc. obviously there's an exception but there's definitely a correlation to sports that cost a lot of money that attract parents with the resources (time and money) and to parents that get crazy about their kids sport.
but dunno, please don't think all hockey parents are like that! my uncles played in the NHL, my youngest brother is 16 and up at a boarding school in Sask. (poor kid) playing junior hockey and my other uncle is still coaching junior hockey. but no crazy hockey parents in our family! it's definitely way more common down in the states!
