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Canberra Today 16°/19° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Sport’s ugly parents

The ugly sporting parent
The ugly sporting parent... Do you confront the abusive parent and possibly make it worse?

One way to turn people away from junior sport is to have some nutter on the sideline constantly yelling abuse and threatening all and sundry, says sports broadcaster TIM GAVEL.

Is there a worse sight in sport, apart from outright thuggery, than the image of the abusive parent at a junior sporting event?

You know, the parent who takes it too far, they sledge or try to intimidate the 13-year-old referee or become abusive when their 10-year-old son or daughter doesn’t win.

I have seen it for myself a couple of times over the past weeks and I feel for the kids. They become caught in the middle. In one instance, the game was stopped because a parent was going too far and a senior official was called across to resolve the problem.

Since I raised the issue on air last week, I have been inundated with examples of poor behaviour from parents at sports events in Canberra.

I have also received e-mails from the people providing their own examples of how they resolved problems in their sport. In one case a group of parents, who were offering plenty of advice to the coach of their kids’ team week after week, were given clipboards and were made assistant coaches and told that if they had any thoughts on the coaching, to write them down.

In another case, an abusive parent was approached by a senior official and told to walk away from the sideline and have a cup of coffee with the official.

There was also the story of a parent who was told by his fellow parents that he wasn’t welcome at games after he launched an attack on a referee in a junior game.

The question is: What to do when you see it happen? Do you confront the abusive parent and possibly make it worse? Do you turn your back and pretend that it didn’t happen? Do you pull your kids out of competitive sport or do you leave it up to the sport’s club to sort it out?

Sporting organisations in Canberra have worked on various strategies to combat the “ugly parent syndrome”, but there have been threats to officials with physical intimidation in some instances, there have been others where kids end up in tears because of the actions of their parents.

In some cases, trouble on the sporting field has continued long after everyone has gone home with parents still upset about a ref’s decision. I have heard of plenty of examples of junior officials walking away from sport because of the intimidation.

Sometimes though, out of a negative comes a positive. I came across a great story on the internet about an abusive parent involved in junior soccer in the US. The parent was behaving like an idiot.

The referee stopped the game and ordered him away, but the abuse continued throughout the remainder of the game.

The abusive parent’s team won 3-1, but the kids of the beaten team told their parents how proud they were that they didn’t behave like the parents of the team they played against on the weekend.

We all know how much time and effort goes into kids’ sport and what is perceived as an unfair call can hurt at the time.

However, these things need to be put into perspective; we can all get carried away, but we all know that our behaviour on the sideline should be as supporters.

We also know that ultimately we want our children to enjoy these experiences and build skills and friendships that will last a lifetime. That’s what sport has to offer.

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Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Tim Gavel

Tim Gavel

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