The news of parents losing control at youth sporting events seems to never end. In Bethesda, Md., officials of a soccer league have banished all the parents from one team from the sidelines of the first two games. The reason? Some parents apparently harassed a referee over a call at a match between 13-year-old girls last season. The parents have to watch - some with binoculars -- from no closer than 100 yards away.

As a youth soccer coach in San Francisco for the past seven years, I have seen and heard about some scary behavior from parent spectators. Once when I was refereeing a match between six-year-olds, a mom from the other team ignored my repeated requests for her to stay off the field per league rules. She kept following around her little tyke, and afterwards, she and her husband confronted me angrily about "being so serious" at a kids' game. I chose not to engage, but the encounter left me rattled because it easily could have led to an ugly shouting match, and quite possibly violence.

Indeed, I got off easier than another parent ref in our league. A dad flew off the sidelines to attack him when the ref put his hand on the shoulder of the man's son to make a point during a game between second-graders. The dad was banned from attending his son's games for the rest of the season, and the incident helped prompt a crackdown by the youth soccer league against aggressive parental behavior. As part of the league's efforts, parents were required to attend special group seminars on how to behave at their kids' games.

Read on...

Jim Carlton

April 28, 2009

The Wall Street Journal