Youth soccer league ask parents to remain silent at games

[GwinnettNole]

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/south-car...nts-remain-121703496--abc-news-parenting.html

Parents at any youth sporting event can cause this to happen. As a father of three our kids have been in soccer, basketball, baseball, gymnastics, and dance and I'd say the parents are horrible at most of them. I've helped coach basketball and soccer and it's true the worst abuse is on the officials/refs/umpires.

 

[GoNolesTX]

Because of this surname alone, I doubt the validity of the story:

Katie Mewborn, 10, said she was "in favor of it."

But honestly, yes, some same team encouragement should be welcomed wholeheartedly, but North Texas parents are over the top. Officiating youth soccer over a decade ago was rough - had many parents escorted to the parking lot on occasion. I get that you're paying thousands of $ every season/year for these kids (separate topic altogether) to compete, improve and possibly get noticed. But when you get to the point of being belligerent because your kid can't take a shoulder on a 50/50 ball, it's time to detox and distance.

As to this story though, I think they took this too far with NO verbal interaction at all for an entire month. Interested to see the story from October where this went wrong, very wrong.

 

[BelemNole]

It's a bit of a cop out. My daughter plays and is an umpire. Her league has an umpire training program that is nationally recognized and starts the girls pretty young - 11-12 years old.
But they have a zero tolerance policy on yelling at the umpires in the league. Not just the parent can be tossed, but the team can end up forfeiting the game. This is made very clear at the start of the season so the coaches and managers keep a tight reign on the parents so they don't lose a game due to a out of control parent.
That doesn't mean that there isn't an occasional groan or two from the crowd on a bad call, but no one is yelling at the kids from the stands.
Still...when my daughter works a game I'm there and will be until she's 16 or so.

 

[62Nole]

It's no wonder that I'm so crazy about football. I mean soccer.

Good grief. You have to have something ( like tripping a 6 year-old girl) to scream about. After all, there is no scoring!!!

 

[Finance85]

Some parents are over the top, but this is an overreaction.

 

[Formerly Rockymtnole]

Our local clubs have done the occasional Silent Saturday but cheering is allowed. They're just asking for nothing negative and no parents trying to coach from the sidelines.

Girls' soccer matches are much worse than boys games, IMO.

 

[Gonolz]

My niece has played in a couple soccer leagues over the years. Those leagues require that each team have a Get Back parent. I don't know what it is actually called, but made me think of the Get Back coach in football whose job it is to prevent players from getting in trouble by going too far. I was at one game where things started to get a little heated. The Get Back parent for each team went and dealt with the parents on their team who were starting to get out of line. I think it is a pretty good system to have someone from a parent's same team calming them down before things get out of hand instead of putting that responsibility on a Ref who is trying to watch what's going on on the field and probably won't notice until it is already out of hand.

 

[ZZ828]

My daughter has played soccer for years. The only time I have ever really seen parents get out of hand is when a ref has let a game get out of hand. By out of hand, it has gotten to the point where girls on both teams realize that nothing is getting called and start escalating things. When this happens, the parents start getting frustrated on both sides, which leads to things getting out of hand. In pretty much all instances where the ref had control of a game from the start, there have been no issues with parents yelling at the ref.

In talking to the coaches after these situations occur, they really have no recourse. There is no accountability for the refs. While there is a process they could follow to complain about bad officiating, they are all uncomfortable doing it for fear of retaliation in future games.

 

[Manch.]

It's a bit of a cop out. My daughter plays and is an umpire. Her league has an umpire training program...

In soccer, they are called referees, not umpires..... and on that note, I would never coach again, it was more like babysitting and the parents let their kids skip practice at will and the parents just basically suck.

 

[BelemNole]

In soccer, they are called referees, not umpires..... and on that note, I would never coach again, it was more like babysitting and the parents let their kids skip practice at will and the parents just basically suck.

Yes, I am aware. OP stated "Parents at any youth sporting event can cause this to happen." so I addressed the one that was relevant to our family. They're called umpires in softball.

 

[RangerNole]

I don't know if the story is true or not; but it is not that surprising. My kids are in HS or leaving for college after the summer but we had the same issues with parents years ago when they were playing rec. league soccer. Part of it was poor referee training and most of it was the rec. center not establishing rules and then enforcing them. One game we had a kid who's dad was yelling at him in Spanish to run over the other kids to get the ball; not just the opposing team but the kids on our team as well. I guess he thought his son was some sort of prodigy in soccer; who knows why a dad would be that way? Anyways he didn't know I speak enough passable Spanish to communicate and knew what he was saying. I finally had enough of the referee not calling anything and his son playing football when all the other kids where playing soccer. I said in Spanish what I thought of him and he stopped for a while; but went right back to it after a bit. While not my proudest moment and it could have gone poorly I finally told my son the next time this kid runs over a person you run him over (my son was like 10 or so and was a big kid for his age; as was the other kid); keep in mind this kid was just running through real small kids and several of them left them game due to being hurt. It worked out the kid stopped doing it; although I don't remember if his dad shut his mouth or not. Bottom line is not enough people are willing to say something out of fear of confrontation; which is real since so many idiots are out there today.

 

[osceola74]

I umpired Little League in Tally during the 1973 season. I worked everyday behind the plate (long story). Had a dad that yelled at his son, the pitcher, on almost every pitch. It was in a very negative way and the kid would be crying on the mound because of his old man. I used to find a way to call time and go talk to the kid to calm him down. The league President would not do anything or say anything to the dad. I told him the next time it happened I was done.. Next time it happened after the game I quit.

 

[gunnyhiway]

I was a Sgt umping a little league game on Camp LeJeune and I ran out to make a call at 3rd base. Ball beat the kid but the 3rd baseman missed the tag. Colonol in the stands started barking and I looked at him and said, "how can he be out from over there and safe here(pointing at 3rd)?"

I expected the worst but he shut up.

 

[seminoleed]

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I coached my son's select soccer team, and the state soccer association had set aside one weekend during the year as a no parental voice weekend (strictly voluntary, though.) We played on the road that weekend, and the league there was honoring the idea...to the point that one of the league officials came to me during warmups to "remind" me there was to be no cheering/yelling from the parents under a state "edict". I reminded him that my parents paid a great deal of money towards their kids sport and they'd do as they please as it was voluntary. That didn't go well, but unbeknownst to me, the parents had already planned their day in advance. Not a peep did we hear other than clapping on goals, but the racket from all the milk jugs filled with rocks was deafening. The dirty looks we got all game long were priceless.

 

[billanole]

I was pretty loud when my kids were early into soccer/little league/swimming, etc... My noise was positive and left the "officials" alone.
I would pace the sidelines, bleachers, etc... meeting with and talking to parents on both sides.
When they started playing middle school/junior high soccer games and we interacted with the football fans, I got real quiet. Those people were filterless. Those games, as well as the high school ones, were held in our "big time" football stadium. The arena seemed to bring out the crazies.
Those games were a lot like an internet message board in that folks would yell/scream at others in a way that likely they would not speak face to face.
Youth games are kinda the last go round for lots of kids. It really is a shame that parents show up.

 

[HilltopperNole]

The school I coached at last year had absolutely awful parents. There was a group of about 10-15 that came up from the little league. Having always coached in high school and college I never experienced the true little league parent. The ninth grade parents were the worst.

Highlights included:

• Constant yelling at the referees at JV games. Profanity, you suck chants, no filters.
• Taunting JV players on the other team.
• Yelling at our JV staff about play calling.
• Emails to me after every JV game about playing calling and wondering why I don't coach the JV and the Varsity.
• Signing a petetion to start the backup quarterback.
• Calls and emails after every loss.
• Yelling at my mom and wife at Varsity games.
• And of course they were all two faced and liked to stir up drama, I would get a lot of screen shots from Facebook, something I could not care less about.