Aggressive parents are ruining kids' sports with bad behavior – and driving away referees
When the NCAA copyrighted the term “March Madness,” it certainly chose the appropriate description to describe the intensity, pace and emotions brought over the course of 67 games.
Passionate fans marvel at the miracle wins, lament over the lost opportunities and deride/cheer the missed/correct calls of every official that helped/hurt your team.
Unfortunately, at the local youth (from K-8) basketball level, a better description might have been “March Insanity.”
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As a local basketball referee, I have called from kindergarten through high school games for more than 40 years. I officiated five girls sub-state games and a sold out ESPN game at Belmont University of two of the top high school boys teams in the country. I am blessed to partner with my 17-year-old grandson for the past few years to teach him the rules and mechanics of being an official.
Adults are modeling embarrassing behavior
Let me share a couple of examples that occurred in youth tournaments recently.
Scenario No. 1: Second-grade girls game. Less than three minutes into the game, one coach had already decided that the best way to handle his team was to officiate and not coach. During a break in the action, I informed him of this action and asked him to leave the calls on the floor to us and we’d leave the coaching to him.
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Literally the next play was a play regarding his team illegally guarding an opposing player before reaching midcourt. The penalty was a warning and giving the ball back to the offensive team. He stomped, he hollered, he threw his hands up multiple times to show his disgust.
I calmly explained my call, he continued to disagree and I advised him that no more discussion of this or any other issue was going to occur from this point on.
That’s when the assistant coach informed me that they were free to say or do anything they wanted from the bench. The disagreement continued until I asked the gym monitor to escort the assistant coach to the parking lot. This action brought tears from his 8-year-old daughter.
Shouldn't children learn sportsmanship?
The following week in a third-grade boys game, less than two minutes into a blowout game (team leading 8-0 against a recreational team that had not come close to reaching half court at this point), there was a timeout.
A parent of the better team took this opportunity to inform me that my partner and I had already missed multiple calls and that we might be the worst officials he had ever seen. I ignored his statements and decided to stay away from his corner of the gym.
His son’s team eventually won 88-11, showing no mercy for the opponents. I later found out that this adult was a former All-Pro NFL lineman whose story has been glamorized in a movie.
The footnote to this story is this same adult was ejected the following day at a different gym for cursing in the stand within earshot of the opposing teams and children in the vicinity.
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These two events raise several questions. What point have we as a society reached when winning a youth basketball game is more important than teaching our children the value of sportsmanship?
Statistics show that over 70% of newly registered officials quit in less than three years citing low pay, travel restrictions and abuse from coaches and parents. Who is going to want to officiate in the future if these incidents continue to escalate?
Charlie Tygard is a native Nashvillian and lifelong resident. He has been a certified basketball official for the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association for more than 40 years. This column first ran in the Nashville Tennessean.
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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Rude parents ruin sports for kids – and are causing referees to quit
