The Bad and the Ugly in Kids Sports

I have been a teacher for over 15 years and during that time I have been coaching school sports teams for the entire time. I grew up surrounded by sports and have seen a lot both in my time as a player and coach but I have never been as embarrassed about something I saw in sports as I was earlier this year. In fact, I was more angry than embarrassed because it exemplified so much of what is wrong with youth sports today. This got me thinking about all the things that I have seen during my time that would qualify as being the bad and the ugly of sports. As I started to reminisce, I was blown away by just how many times I have witnessed something that has left a bad taste in my mouth. Things that have simply been embarrassing to see. Here are a few that really stood out.

Angry Parents

I can't tell you the number of times I have been frustrated with the actions of a parent at a sporting event. These are the people who are supposed be supporting young athletes no matter what and so often they are the source of some of the most stress and the worst attitudes.

During a touch football game at the tournament that I was running a few weeks ago, a parent started yelling at his kid about a mistake that he had made on the field. The kid was 13 years old. This parent looked like an absolute ass and thankfully the referee asked him to be quiet or he was going to have to leave. I can only imagine how uncomfortable it must have been for the teacher who was coaching the team.

I have seen this at so many youth hockey games that you can't count them on your hands. Watching a hockey game can be very emotional but the last thing that your 8 year old player needs is to see mom or dad up in the stands and yelling at the players or the referees and causing a commotion. The worst case of this for me was the night I was watching my niece play hockey and the parents in the stands got so angry that a fight broke out between a couple of the mothers. These were the mothers of 10 year old hockey players that lost complete control and went after each other physically. Thankfully, they were kept apart but the situation was such nonsense. I felt horrible for the kids that were having to see their moms in the stands fighting.

Bad Coaches

I can't tell you the number of times I have run into bad coaches along the way. Coaches land themselves in this category for a variety of reasons but at the end of the day it is always for not putting the kids first and when I say kids, I mean all the kids that are involved.

So many times I have seen coaches yell at players and get angry with how a player is playing. I have even seen many times when the victim of this frustration is clearly the best player on the team and yet they are still being bombarded with angry words and coaches beating them down. Thankfully, the referees are usually all over this type of nonsense and I have seen many coaches removed from their duties during games. What blows me away is how these people actually become coaches or are able to continue to be a coach after acting the way that they do. I know that if my child was being treated that way on a team it wouldn't take long for me to be complaining to the league or moving my kid to a different team.

A couple years ago I had to deal with a coach who took sportsmanship to an all-time low. Two years ago when I took our school’s junior basketball team to play in a tournament, one of our games was against a team that was clearly better than us. Several of the players on the other team played basketball at a competitive level outside of school. The score got pretty out of hand in a hurry and my team was getting beat really badly. I was impressed with the way my players kept trying and never gave up.

Unfortunately, the other coach encouraged his team to run up the score as much as possible. It wasn’t enough for them to win and to beat us but they were trying to embarrass us. They were enjoying themselves so much that they were falling over laughing on the bench and they were taking unnecessary three-point attempts and cheering wildly when they went in. The worst part of this display of unsportsmanlike behaviour was that the coach was not only allowing it to happen, but he was encouraging it.

He was laughing just as much as his players and loving every minute of the trouncing they were putting on us. It was a sad display and one that caused me to have a very serious conversation with him about it after the game. He could tell how upset I was about how they had behaved but his only comment was “we were just having fun”. I told him that it was embarrassing to watch the way he teaching the kids that it was ok to play with poor sportsmanship and that it was unfortunate that his players were learning this.

I didn't walk away feeling like I had made a dent in his attitude but when the parents of my players came to me afterwards and thanked me for making a point of speaking to the other coach, I knew that I had done the right thing.

The reality is that the human element will always create these unfortunate situations in sports. It is just unfortunate when it happens in kids sports and when it is the adults who create the issue. Our role as adults is to make sports fun and encourage kids to do their best and play hard. This will help build a love for sports rather than making these kids want to leave the games they love. Have you seen things at kids games that have made you cringe? I'd love to hear about some of your stories.