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Teaching Terrible Lessons
These obnoxious parents aren’t just spoiling the fun, though. They’re also driving kids away from sports and, worse, teaching terrible lessons about handling loss and settling disputes. One Boston-area umpire told The Boston Globe that he’s heard parents say to referees things like “I hope you’ve got someone to walk you back to your car.” Not a bad example for your kid if you hope he’ll someday join the Mob.Of course, nothing quite compares with the case of Thomas Junta, a hockey dad convicted of involuntary manslaughter for beating another father to death in 2000 after a youth hockey practice in Reading, Massachusetts. That story prompted a slew of articles and editorials lamenting the state of youth sports, but the aftershock didn’t last long.
Take the case of Wayne Derkotch. Back in October 2006, the Philadelphia father was upset that his son wasn’t getting more playing time in his youth football league. So he angrily confronted the team’s coach, Jermaine Wilson, who says Derkotch was screaming profanities at him. Derkotch says Wilson attacked him and beat him on the head, knocking out a tooth, until Derkotch pulled out a gun to defend himself. A judge acquitted Derkotch of assault charges in April on self-defense grounds (which leaves open the question: Who brings a gun to a youth football game?). By the way, the boys these guys brawled over were five and six years old.
Even worse is the story of Mark Picard. In May 2005 the 46-year-old North Branford, Connecticut, father clubbed his daughter’s high school softball coach repeatedly in the head and body with an aluminum bat. The coach’s offense? He’d suspended Picard’s daughter for missing a game to attend a prom.
And things got so bad in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a couple of years ago that a youth baseball league for 8- to 12-year-olds suspended its schedule because parents couldn’t control their own behavior. In one instance, two mothers got into a fight in the stands, prompting their sons to jump a fence and join in. “People have simply gone crazy,” a league spokesman told The Standard-Times.
The examples are endless. In Rolling Meadows, Illinois, a father watching a wrestling match picked up a kid who had just pinned his son and hurled him off the mat. (The man said he did this because his son’s shoulder had been injured.) In California, a father sprinted onto the field at a youth football league game and blindsided a 13-year-old boy for putting a late hit on his son. In Raleigh, North Carolina, public recreation officials decided to install six-foot fences to separate parents from playing fields after a rash of bad behavior, including the taunting of children as young as 8.
You can’t blame those Raleigh officials, but fencing off parents like they’re dangerous wild animals is no real remedy. The behavior itself has to stop.
The Little League organization now offers a “Sport Parent Code of Conduct” that forbids any booing and taunting as well as the harassment of officials and coaches. “We are trying to remind parents that they are role models, whether they intend to be or not,” says Little League spokesman Chris Downs. Other localities have imposed zero tolerance policies, which bring down severe penalties—like banning parents from games—for any unsportsmanlike behavior.
Concerned parents can step up to the plate as well, says Fred Engh, founder of the National Alliance for Youth Sports. Engh says parents should pressure local recreation agencies to set standards for behavior and have serious, enforceable punishments. After all, Engh says, “nothing can teach kids life skills like sports.” And nothing can ruin that experience faster than a bunch of grown-ups who couldn’t care less about sportsmanship.
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