October 29, 2008

While a group of disgusted parents of young football players and hard-nosed league officials from the Manitoba Minor Football Association squabble over alleged racial slurs and who said what to whom, who heard it, and who did anything about it, a much more critical issue is facing young hockey players in Winnipeg. A steady decline in the number of referees over the past several years has created a crisis set to jeopardize upcoming seasons.

“It’s very tough being a referee. It’s very demanding. These are not professional referees. These are young men and women who are trying to provide a service for the people of Winnipeg and Manitoba,” Doug Lischka, president of the Winnipeg Minor Hockey Association told Sun Media. Two different sports and two different sets of athletes suffering from the same stench: A disrespect for authority and a lack of sportsmanship from the stands, not the ice.

Enough male and female referees and linesmen still exist this season to handle games involving close to 10,500 players, but a lot more than just the tip of this iceberg is showing.

Minor hockey executives blame much of the dwindling numbers on verbal attacks from spectators, aka, parents. Parents in the stands expecting perfection on the ice, not from their offspring but from the men and women with the whistles.

Emotional outbursts at sporting events have been commonplace for decades at hockey rinks and on football fields. The competitive nature of team sport has always fuelled emotion and it’s been “part of the game” for anger to, now and then, get the better of a player or a coach. But rudeness and vulgarity aimed at those enforcing the rules — from the stands and bleechers — is the ugly new reality of youth sports. Referees are simply fed up and who could blame them?

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