Adults’ Antics Cast Bad Light on Youth Sports

What is it about youth sports that brings out the worst in adults?

On one hand, you have the obnoxious "adults" you see at your kid's little league/basketball/insert-youth-sport-here game. You know the ones I'm talking about, right? These are the folks who are unnecessarily loud, refuse to sit down and scream all the "bad words" at the coaches they tell their own kids not to repeat. It's kind of like sitting in the student section at a college football game.

And on the other hand, you have those adults who take it completely over the top. For example, take this story from Massachusetts, where after a sixth-grade girls basketball game, a man fought one of the coaches and bit part of his ear off. Or how about this story from Michigan City, where an angry parent beat a coach into unconsciousness for making his daughter run laps? And it's not just here in the U.S, either. Check out this story from Poland, where some over-zealous fans started setting off firecrackers and flares at a youth soccer game, which resulted in the game getting cancelled.

All I can say is, "Seriously?" I though the point of youth sports was to give kids a chance to play and to learn about things like perseverance and teamwork and, most importantly, to have fun. But when you have stupid adults like this who get way too involved in the process, make fools of themselves, and end up hurting somebody, what kind of example are they setting for the kids?

If you want to cheer on and support your kids, by all means, go for it. Just don't be stupid about it.