You have probably now all seen the CNN front page video of parents acting like idiots at a 7-year old baseball game over the poor officiating of a 13 year old umpire. Today there was a CNN article that was probably taking it a little too much the other way.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/20/opinions ... index.html

I do have good memories of youth sports, but I also have some pretty bad ones. I quit fast pitch baseball at about the age of 10 because I was in a small town and we played every team about 5 times each. One of those teams had two brothers who were always the pitchers (and pretty good athletes and could pitch hard for our age), and they hated me and would bean me every single time I came up to bat. I went almost and entire season getting beaned every at bat against that team and the coaches and parent didn't say a dang thing or pull them. So, I quit.

However, my church ball experience in high school was awesome. We had a coach who taught us offenses and defenses, really worked with some of the less gifted kids to get them to contribute (he turned this crazy uncoordinated book worm kid into the Dennis Rodman-esque rebounding champion of our league). We were all kids who couldn't make the school team, but held our own in pickup games with those kids and our league was pretty competitive.

So, after all this rambling, I guess my question is how to keep youth sports from turning into an episode of Parent Behaving Badly?

I seem to remember a movie or tv episode of something where the kids got their parents kicked out of attending games. They just played with only a couple unrelated adults present to officiate and supervise.

Build brick walls around home plate and make all the patents sit in the outfield.

I coach youth baseball and parents are terrible. They think they know everything about the game and they are all over every stupid call. The coaches are usually great, but the patents just need to shut up.


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Muzzle all the idiot parents. I coached little league basketball, and some of those parents were totally triggered. Great example for their kids.


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I spent the last three years as a district president in the Ute Conference little league football. The best thing to help with the parent problems was to move the sidelines back. The wider the sidelines the less problems with parents.


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Swish my magic wand and allow people to internalize instead of externalize.


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blueblood wrote:I spent the last three years as a district president in the Ute Conference little league football. The best thing to help with the parent problems was to move the sidelines back. The wider the sidelines the less problems with parents.


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Put them in the end zone and your problems go away


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My recommendation is to not play baseball.

Seriously though, coaches have to manage the parents - almost like children. Set rules, clear expectations for behavior, and consequences at the beginning of the year; then follow through. If the parents can't follow the rules, they need to find another team that will work better for their family.

Just go to the games and enjoy watching your kid compete. If their is a bad call so be it just let it play out. One thing I see is parents criticizing the coaches over playing time and the refs over bad calls. I have to come to realize the odds of my kids ever making it to college is slim to none and professional is none. One rule I gave myself is if I am not willing to coach or ref I will never criticize the coach over playing time for my kid or the ref for making a bad call.

We keep complaining about how kids act these days, yet the real problem is the adults. This is completely immature behavior. Shame on these parents and any other parents who behave in this manner. At the end of the day, a 7 year old baseball game is not important enough to act like fools.

jpswensen wrote: ↑

June 21st, 2019, 1:05 pm

You have probably now all seen the CNN front page video of parents acting like idiots at a 7-year old baseball game over the poor officiating of a 13 year old umpire. Today there was a CNN article that was probably taking it a little too much the other way.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/20/opinions ... index.html

I do have good memories of youth sports, but I also have some pretty bad ones. I quit fast pitch baseball at about the age of 10 because I was in a small town and we played every team about 5 times each. One of those teams had two brothers who were always the pitchers (and pretty good athletes and could pitch hard for our age), and they hated me and would bean me every single time I came up to bat. I went almost and entire season getting beaned every at bat against that team and the coaches and parent didn't say a dang thing or pull them. So, I quit.

However, my church ball experience in high school was awesome. We had a coach who taught us offenses and defenses, really worked with some of the less gifted kids to get them to contribute (he turned this crazy uncoordinated book worm kid into the Dennis Rodman-esque rebounding champion of our league). We were all kids who couldn't make the school team, but held our own in pickup games with those kids and our league was pretty competitive.

So, after all this rambling, I guess my question is how to keep youth sports from turning into an episode of Parent Behaving Badly?

The 13-year-old ump actually talked to one of the news agencies here and came across extremely mature. He said the whole fiasco began when the ump (again barely a teenager) had to tell one of the adults to watch his language around 7-year-olds. Good time!

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/13 ... e-n1020266

My worst is experience is watching my 6-7 year old nephews soccer game (ya know where all ten kids on the field are all at the ball), one rule was no goalie. You could have a defender, although optional. Well my nephews coach was trying to teach the kids some fundamentals and had a defender. The other coach starting chewing the kid out for “f****** blocking the goal”

I played rec soccer until I graduated high school just a 4v4 league. My coaches wife was kicked out once for screaming at the 15 year old ref for “calling the game different than last weeks” took half our team plus her husband to convince her to sit in the car for the last 5 minutes of gametime


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There are shortages for referees in most youth sports, especially high school, and the number one listed reason for the poor retention by referees who quit after just 1 or 2 seasons is because of the verbal (and sometimes physical threats of abuse) by parents of the youth players.

It is really sad to me. My youth sports were a positive experience. I enjoyed playing and never worried about the refs calls. My dad coached and my mom read a book. I feel like I learned a lot about hard work and team work during those years. I also learned to never get after a ref for a poor call. The lesson of staying calm and working through adversity continues to help me to this day. I find it sad that parents are ripping these important lessons away from their kids. No wonder kids these days are feeling more and more entitled. We adults are entitling them with our poor behavior and rude antics.

I coach a lot of baseball and have really never yelled at an umpire. But I am now one of those terrible coaches that freaked out at an umpire this past season. The same ump called a ball fair that was four feet foul half way to third base because it "landed fair". Later he called a kid safe at first when my first baseman grabbed the ball with his bare hand and touched the ball to the base. The kid running to first stopped and went back to the dugout. His explanation was that the ball "was in his hand." When I asked if he had ever played baseball and knew the rules, he said he has played his entire life (about 17 years old). After a third similarly bad call, I lost my mind. I will say my team thought it was hilarious, and was a team bonding experience.

The worst is when you play on a team that wins every time and the other team's parents give you a bad time walking out of the stadium "everyone knows how dirty you guys play, everyone knows you guys are thugs, every knows this or that" I've heard it all, and we just laugh because all of the kids my son plays with including himself, are very nice and extremely respectful. I've taught my kid never to mouth off or talk back, even when the other team does it. In fact I've had refs come up to my son after the the game and talk to him about how respectful he was and how well he followed their instructions etc. As a father I never engage with the other team unless they want to compliment my son, which happens sometimes. Life's too short to get bent out of shape about that kind of stuff. When my son first started in flag FB, he got slugged in the face and I still didn't even leave my seat. The refs saw it and ejected the kid, and then my son made that team pay. That's our motto, leave it on the field.

IMO depends on priorities and enforcement. I serve on the local youth baseball board, am the umpire coordinator, and coach all my boys’ teams. My 2 oldest boys ump as well. As a board we emphasize from the get go that umpires are learning just like the players. For that matter, 95% of our umpires are players themselves. As a board we take parent/player/coach conduct very seriously. Each coach agrees to our code of conduct and is aware that they are also responsible for their ‘parents’ as well and if they are unwilling to reign in a parent they will forfeit their game. We have had no problem removing the occasional coach who can’t control him/herself. We monitor games and have removed parents from the park when needed. Last season after several instances we as a board permanently banned a parent from our fields. My experience over the years has been that these instances are few and far between. The vast majority of interactions are positive. Expectations have been set and are enforced. Parents and coaches at this point know we are serious in promoting good sportsmanship. Interestingly our coaches/parents/players seem to exhibit the same respect and decorum we expect in our rec league even when traveling to other facilities during all-star and AAU tournaments as well.

From the ump perspective we have a professional umpire as our umpire in chief. All our umps must first attend classroom and on field training before umping. They do still make mistakes and forget or misinterpret rules. Just like the kids playing I might add... Along with myself our UIC is often at the fields and works with the umps as situations arise. Regular season is for training learning, but during league championship games we make ump assignments to ensure kids with experience, knowledge, and skill are behind the plate and in the field. This seems to really take umps out of most games and lets the kids win/lose on their own. At this point most coaches/kids/parents recognize, after having seen many of the umps all season long, that those calling championship games are capable and generally respected as competent even before the game begins. It works out great for us and I’ve been doing this for 8 years now. Let’s not let that time the car broke down erase in our minds all the many times the car has reliably gotten us to where we want to be....


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