I am going to defend the majority of HS coaches here. Travel ball is FAR more abusive to the body than HS ball and it isn't even close. BUT much of the blame for the abuse is on the parents. My experience of this as a parent was having two sons who played HS ball..the older one went on to pitch in college. They both played travel ball. The older son's team was a higher profile team that played at least 70+ games each summer after the HS season. They also played summer ball for their HS teams as well. This was a very good travel team with two of the boys eventually going on to play MLB baseball and a few others who signed pro contracts.
My older son pitched and played a few different positions on that team. As far as caring about the well being of the player I wouldn't give you a nickel for any of his travel coaches except one. All they cared about was winning tournaments that didn't mean squat. The fact is, all of the players who played pro and college ball from this team.. which was pretty much all of them, were discovered on their HS teams. So the travel ball line of being scouted and high profile tournaments was a bunch of BS. But still, I blame parents of those boys too.
Don't get me wrong, my son got better on that team because of the competition he played against. But when it came to qualifying tournaments I saw pitchers pitch on a Friday and then again on a Sunday. (not my son) They might have a 10 inning limit on pitchers for the tourney but that could be 150 pitches in 48 hours in two different outings. It was not unheard of for the team to play eight games in one week end. They had a lot of players but a lot of them got hurt from abuse. There were sore arms. I once had to go to the dugout to tell the coach to take my son out of a game he was pitching in a tournament because he had reached his pitch limit. Not many of the dads would do that. They just let it go in hopes of getting their "money's worth" of participation and one kid hurt his arm after throwing 135 pitches in a 7 inning game...insane. He couldn't even play the rest of the tournament. In my opinion that was the dad's fault too for not stepping in. Don't forget, many of these games were being played in some brutal hot and humid weather too.
Something that isn't mentioned here is the abuse college pitchers take too because a ton of college coaches also care only about winning. Far more than HS coaches, especially if the kid is getting scholarship money. If he is getting money he is going on that mound, period. In general I don't think HS coaches are nearly as bad as the others I mentioned.
Finally, as far as parent input goes...you can approach ANY coach about your son. It all depends on how you do it. If you are civil, respectful and ask questions without appearing to question their motives you'll get respect back and you'll get honesty. It also helps to know something about the game and to not be a parent who is "learning as his son goes along." But if you are an a-hole, (and I have seen MANY parents act this way) disrespectful and questioning their motives..if you're one of the parents who is overly loud and constantly makes an *** out of himself or herself in the bleachers and yells at the coaches from the bleachers you can expect them to get defensive when you approach them. Honestly, I always sat down one of the lines by myself or with my wife...parents were the reason for this.
Sorry this is so long
