SportsLetter

Coaches and Parents and Refs, oh my

Bob Cook’s blog, “Your Kid’s Not Going Pro,” which appears on “True/Slant,” is a treasure trove of examples of Adults Behaving Badly.  For the sensitive among you, we’ll tell you in advance that Cook isn’t always PG-rated.

His posts have documented incidents such as the volleyball coach in New Jersey who threw a volleyball at the ball at the head of one of his own players, (listen especially to the parent at the end of the video who says “he gets kicked out every time”); a youth basketball commissioner who suffered a concussion, had his jaw dislocated and has dental damage after being attacked by a dad immediately after a tournament game; and a wrestling referee who grabbed the throat of a high school wrestler while “advising” the wrestler not to “misbehave on my mat.”  Finally, a recent column chronicled a number of fights that have occurred at high school basketball games across the country.

Sadly, as these articles and accompanying videos demonstrate, inappropriate behavior can come from just about any adult acting in just about any capacity of youth sports.  And Bob Cook will continue to document them for us.  Job security.  Depressing, but job security.

If loving this story is wrong, we don’t wanna be right

The case of former Mississippi Congressman and soccer dad Chip Pickering refuses to go away.  Pickering, the family-values-Republican accused of attacking a soccer coach whom he said was verbally abusing his son, faces a misdemeanor assault charge and wants to clear up the matter by sitting down with his alleged victim, Chris Hester, “man-to-man” without lawyers to shake hands and “set a good example for the kids.” 

AP reports that Hester, who claims to have undergone neck surgery a few weeks before the incident, responded, “Funny, he wants to put the burden on me to stand up and be a man, but what kind of man attacks a man in a neck brace?”  Hester’s attorney, Mac McCool, – really, that’s his name – added that he has not been contacted by Pickering’s lawyers about a resolution. 

The soccer contretemps is the second legal embarrassment of 2009 for Pickering.  In July his estranged wife filed an alienation of affection suit against his alleged mistress, Elizabeth Creekmore Byrd, claiming that Byrd ruined the Pickerings’ marriage by carrying on an affair with her husband while then Congressman Pickering lived in a Christian residence in Washington, D.C. operated by the Fellowship Foundation.

And we thought Canadians were nice

It seems incidents of misbehaving parents, coaches -- or ex-politicians -- are not unique to the United States.

Toronto's Star.com today had a story about youth hockey in the Greater Toronto Hockey League and the "startling number of hothead outbursts against officials by adults behind the bench, from profane attacks to threats of violence."  Examples included a father/assistant coach who "amassed 19 game suspensions and seven major penalties for disputing officials' calls – six of them including verbal abuse of the official."

Continuing:

A study of 6,622 critical incidents in the GTHL during the 2007-08 season found coaches responsible for the largest number – 2,537 – of problems reported by referees.  Sport consulting firm Justplay, which conducted the research on behalf of the GTHL, defines critical incidents as events demonstrating "poor" or "very poor" sportsmanship and no redeeming examples of good sportsmanship.

Soccer dad

In a case of he said-he said, Mississippi’s Clarionledger.com reported that former congressman Chip Pickering, a “family-values” Republican from Mississippi who served 12 years in the US House of Representatives, was involved in a fight with a soccer coach after a youth soccer game.
 
According to the article, Pickering was upset by what he thought was verbal abuse heaped on his son by Christopher Hester:

…Hester, who coaches a South Madison County Soccer League team, contends the former congressman pulled him from his vehicle as he was trying to leave. The men scuffled and had to be pulled apart by spectators … Hester, a nurse who coaches 10- and 11-year-olds, played against Pickering’s son’s team at Liberty Park on Sunday. Pickering approached Hester about the way his son was treated, and the incident escalated from there.

For his part, Pickering maintains that:

Hester “verbally abused and physically intimated my son, visibly upsetting my son to the point of uncontrollable crying. I approached the coach, who was sitting in his vehicle, and asked him to not address my son in such a manner again. I did not say anything further to him, nor did I ever threaten him.”  Pickering said Hester then removed his seat belt and exited the SUV, “attacking and assaulting me, and I was forced to defend myself by restraining him.”

While the ex-Congressman has asked the Mississippi State Soccer Association to suspend Hester, it appears Pickering, who already is going through a divorce and probably will spend some time in court over custody issues, may have another court date in his future.

Sign of the times

Richard Crepeau, of the University of Central Florida, where he teaches American sport history, 20th Century U.S. history and American cultural history, takes a dim view of the notion that sport builds character.  On poppolitics.com Crepeau offers recent examples of Parents-Gone-Wild in youth sports, and derides a system in which the "child as surrogate for the parent has reached pathological levels."