Violence in youth Sports

By Marcus Kabel

March 27th, 2008

Associated Press

 CARTHAGE, Mo. - Ultimate fighting was once the sole domain of burly men who beat each other bloody in anything-goes brawls on pay-per-view TV.

The bare-knuckle fights are now attracting competitors as young as 6 whose parents treat the sport as casually as wrestling, Little League or soccer.

The changes were evident on a recent evening in southwest Missouri, where a team of several young boys and one girl grappled on gym mats in a converted garage.

Two members of the group called the "Garage Boys Fight Crew" touched their thin martial-arts gloves in a flash of sportsmanship before beginning a relentless exchange of sucker punches, body blows and swift kicks.

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Youth league - A melee ensues when the Molalla coach confronts the referee who ejected him from the girls basketball game

By Brent Walth

February 18th, 2008

The Oregonian

A basketball game between the Estacada Fury and Molalla Wildcats started like any other match between fifth- and sixth-grade girls Saturday. Parents cheered in the Estacada High School gym as the referees blew the opening whistle.

Before long, though, things got out of hand.

One referee, Houston Webb, a local high school player, ejected the Molalla coach, Jeffery Scott Larsen, after the coach continued to berate him over his calls. 

But Larsen, police say, refused to leave and accosted Webb after the game. Parents rushed the floor, some shoving followed, and players left in tears. Then the police showed up.

On Sunday, after further investigation, the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office arrested Larsen, 34, and cited him with criminal trespassing in the gym after the referee had tossed him out of the game. State law says it's a Class C misdemeanor if an ejected coach refuses to leave the scene of a sports event. 

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Students' signs cross the line

By Sandi Dolbee

Union-Tribune

Christopher Schuck, head of La Jolla Country Day School, is quiet as he looks at photographs of placards held up by his students at last week's girls basketball game against their cross-town rival.

He had just finished defending a sign, “No 1 likes U,” that ran on the cover of Tuesday's Union-Tribune sports section, saying it wasn't aimed at anyone in particular – including the young woman who transferred from Country Day to The Bishop's School, another elite private prep academy in La Jolla.  But other signs specifically name two players on the opposing team. One includes a picture defaced with a mustache. The other has a word play that is sexually derogatory.

“Yes,” Schuck concedes, “there's no question these signs cross the line.”

So now what?

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By Tom Jacobs

February 2nd, 2008

Miller-McCune

Sports build character — or so we have been told by coaches, fans and a fair number of academics. A young athlete — say, a member of a high school football team — learns what it takes to achieve a goal, absorbing on a visceral level such crucial concepts as teamwork, self-discipline and fair play.

Time out, cry some social scientists. Youth sports, they counter, instill a machismo mindset, promote a winning-is-everything mentality and reinforce the notion that physical violence is an acceptable way to resolve problems.

So which is it? A series of studies in recent years have come to different conclusions, with academics unable to agree on even the seemingly simple question of whether high school athletes are more likely to engage in violent behavior.

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