Imagine yourself sitting at your daughter or son's soccer game, and as the game ended your coach walked to the center of the field, dropped his pants and mooned the other team's parents, coaches and players.
What would your reaction be? What would your child think? And how can you justify his actions for such a senseless and idiotic reaction to a hotly contested game?
Envision, once again, viewing your child's football game, chatting with some of the parents and enjoying the day's festivities, when all of a sudden one of the parents pulls out a .357 magnum gun, strolls over to the coach, points it at his head and tells him to put his five year old into the game.
Astonished? Shocked? I would be, and rest assured I wouldn't be sending my little junior over to that guy's house for a sleepover.
As isolated as these two incidents are, they are indicative as to where youth sports might be heading unless we curtail the problematic minority that is ruining it for everyone else.
Jim Thompson, the founder and president of the Positive Coaching Alliance said, "I think there is more adult misbehavior than there used to be, and we're hearing about it more and more, but there is a silent majority of parents who don't like what's going on."
In the case of the soccer coach, who was a coach in Northern California where the incident occurred a few weeks ago, he was suspended for the rest of the season.
The gun toting parent was asked to never attend another football game.
These are commendable actions by the respective leagues, but I also feel the soccer coach should never be allowed to coach youth sports in that league again, while the gunslinger should be ordered to attend anger management classes.
If you think these two incidents were sporadic, guess again.
A father of a T-ball player was recently jailed for physically abusing the coach because his son couldn't play the position he wanted, and on another occasion, a parent head butted a softball official after his wife was ejected for berating the same official.
In the T-ball melee a little girl had to be hospitalized because she was hurt in the fracas between the two adults. When is the light going to go on for some childish adults?
That light hasn't apparently reached a group of parents who started a bleacher clearing brawl at a 12-year-old girls softball game. In the ensuing fisticuffs that followed, six squad cars of police were summoned, three rescue squads to handle the injured and two detectives to sort out what started the WWF main event.
All that was missing was the well coined phrase, "Lets get ready to ruuuuuummmble."
So what's the answer to this ever growing problem?
Well, we can't put parents in a Plexiglas box with a straight jacket on, nor can we make rules that will back us into a corner and not be enforceable.
I've heard a few suggestions from local youth associations and national organizations.
One of those is to have a youth sports national governing body that would set down behavioral standards for adults and players, provide training in both intangible and tangible areas for coaches and parents, set policies and professional etiquette guidelines and educate our society on the big picture of youth sports.
That's quite a big endeavor and I'm sure it may never happen in our lifetime, even though we're one of the only countries in the world that doesn't have one. By re-occurring situations, though, it certainly shows we need something.
A few organizations have well tooled infrastructures to a certain extent, such as Little League Baseball, the Positive Coaching Alliance and other national youth groups. They are making some inroads despite some individuals that scoff at their shortcomings and approach.
Personally, I think every youth sports league should have a parents night before each season begins, to explain unacceptable behavior, provide examples of how coaches should treat players and how parents can provide a wholesome experience for their child.
One night every season isn't going to upset a league's time agenda, upset a parent's calendar, or be viewed as a waste of time. What it will provide, though, is continuity from year to year in bringing everyone closer to what is in the best interest of the kids, and that should always be the top priority.
By educating each parent and coach about the psychological aspects of youth sports and how it affects our kids, maybe then, and only then, can we set a better behavioral example for them.
Rich Taylor has been coaching youth sports for over 25 years, is the Co-Director of the ACE Powerband national arm strengthening program and formerly scouted and coached in professional baseball. Reach him at rjtaylor23@yahoo.com.
Rich Taylor Rich Taylor is the owner, head instructor and CEO of California Pitching Academy. He is a former pitching coach at Pepperdine University and Chicago White Sox scout. He founded the West Coast Baseball School. He has more than 20 years of youth coaching experience and wrote the book “Molding the Young Pitcher.” His regular column appears twice a month. Send him an email.
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