This weekend I wrote a sports leadership column for The Examiner discussing the recent Florida high school basketball incident, where a player unexpectedly physically assaulted the official working the game. Sadly, this incident is only one of many unfortunate stories over the years where parents, coaches, and student athletes have forgotten about role modeling and instead lashed out violently over something that happened on the field. The question, then, becomes one around why so many more people today feel that it is OK to act out physically if they don’t like whats going on during the game (The Parents Playbook)?
Ironically, there are very few bad people who participate in youth sports. When we observe ugly incidents like the Florida basketball melee, we often sit at home and make tongue-in-cheek comments about how “crazy” that person is, rarely stopping to think about how we ever evolved to the society we have become today that often includes off-field violence in youth sports. Short-sighted theorists and “arm chair quarterbacks” will quickly dismiss these violent acts as those being committed by “crazy people.” Unfortunately, this is simply not the case.
Over the last 10-15 years we have witnessed increasingly more violence in youth sports, prompting us to think about what factors might be at play contributing to the situation. Interestingly, at about the same time as this trend with violence, we have concurrently seen a dramatic spike in the seriousness and intensity of training in youth sports. Think about that for a moment – kids today often play year-round, specialize in one sport, and sometimes even play in multiple leagues at the same time! On top of all that, parents today are more inclined to spend more money on additional training, equipment, lessons, and travel associated with their child’s sport – all with the expectations of increased playing time. The result? A landscape in youth sports that includes more money, more time, and more intensity.
As more families take youth sports more seriously, is it any wonder why we are also seeing more anger and frustration from the families involved? Think about that for a moment – we have more parents on the sidelines today who have completely lost sight of the fact that youth sports should be about fun and human self growth, not a prerequisite for a college athletic scholarship! As a result, we are seeing many more sane parents turn insane – albeit for just a moment – when they see their child goof up on the field, or witness the coach sit their child after all the time and money that has been put into their child’s athletic development. This is precisely the moment when we see some people temporarily “lose it” and lash out verbally, or worse yet, physically.
Back in the 1970’s ABC Wide World of Sports began each week with an introduction to the program that included a montage of various sports clips from around the world, with Jim McKay offering the famous voice over of “The thrill of victory, to the agony of defeat.” Ironically, in 2010 these words have never been more true, and explain in large part why so many more people seem to be losing it at games. Personally, I cannot think of another human endeavor that allows us to run the gamut of emotion (and often several times over) between thrill and anger, happiness and despair. Whether we like it or not, sports are the ultimate roller coaster ride of emotions, lending evidence as to why some very normal, healthy, and sane people become upset in the moment, and sometimes allow these negative feelings to spill over into unplanned aggression. No, it doesn’t make it right, but it may help explain why we are seeing these problems today.
The reality is that most of the incidents we see today when it comes to unexpected anger and violence in sports are due to good people getting briefly caught up in momentary anger – and not “bad” people who are horrible parents that need to be jailed. As crazy as it sounds, it could be you who is the next person sitting on the sidelines upset about the way your child is being treated, and the years of time and money you have devoted to your child’s athletic development may leave you at-risk for the very same behaviors you condemn in others.
www.drstankovich.com
