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The real competition in youth athletics is happening off
the field, and no one is winning.
Twelve-year-old Stephen Boggione left the sign-up table for the spring baseball
league in tears. The young athlete wasn't angry with a teammate or worried he
might strike out. Boggione was afraid he'd have to drink the team water during
games.
Months earlier, Jerome Breland, father of a member of the 49ers youth football
team, decided to seek revenge on a player who had teased his son. He decided the
best way to do this would be to place ipecac, a substance used to induce vomiting,
in the other boy's juice. Unfortunately for young Stephen Boggione and his other
friends, the team was low on water and the boys shared the juice intended for
the alleged bully.
Children's sports are thriving, and in turn, so is violence among parents and
players alike.
"It's a reflection of when the parents grew up in recent years with violence in
their childhood being the norm," said Richard Lapchick, director of the Center
for the Study of Sports and Society at Northeastern University. "It would be unrealistic
to think all of them have matured enough so that this violence didn't carry over."
The infamous "Hockey Dads" case concerned a pair of fathers who got into a fatal
brawl in front of their young children in Florida. Thomas Junta got into a scuffle
with the supervisor of his son's hockey practice, Michael Costin, about the practice
being run too roughly. Junta outweighed Costin by 100 pounds and beat him to death.
The defense argued that Costin was the aggressor in this case, but regardless
of the details, the episode that took place more than four years ago is one example
in a startling epidemic of sports-related violence.
When a 10-year-old boy dropped a pass in a game of co-ed football, his coach broke
both of his arms by throwing him to the ground. In another case, an angry father
spent 45 days in jail after threatening to kill a Little League coach for pulling
his son from a game.
"There is nothing like youth sports to bring out the worst in parents," said Jeffrey
Leslie, president of the Jupiter-Tequesta (Fla.) Athletic Association. "I've seen
parents screaming at their kids, pushing them too hard to perform; children fighting
in games, incited by their parents; kids crying on the mound because their parents
embarrassed them."
From professional athletes and their million dollar salaries to the Olympics,
winning is the focus. Train hard, play hard and don't disappoint.
"When winning is everything, when power is everything, this creates an environment
where people suffer. In these sports, the children are the vulnerable people,"
said a representative of the Canadian Institute for the Prevention of Child Abuse.
So what can be done for the 30 million children in North America who are involved
in youth sports? Experts recommend not placing too much emphasis on the outcome
of the game-neither on losing or winning. Jeers heard from the sidelines aren't
to say parents aren't trying; about 2,000 parents showed up to a spring training
facility in Jupiter, Fla. to hear an hour-long program on how to behave at games.
Afterward, they signed a pledge promising to support their kids without causing
unnecessary problems.
Parents of young athletes should utilize the training available and be able to
keep their anger and competitiveness out of their children's games…and out of
their juice.
