As the referee raised the right arm of the victorious teen wrestler in the air, the fighting started in one corner of the stands. Arms flailed and haymakers were delivered, middle-aged fathers were suddenly roiling and rolling between the seats desperately trying to get their digs in. From all over the gym, men, women and children raced to join the affray, some bounding up the steps better to reach the action quicker. On the floor, well-meaning peacemakers tried to stem the relentless flow of would-be combatants. King Canute had more success stopping the tide coming in.
Police were eventually called, and arrests were made at the New Jersey District 25 tournament at Collingswood High School last month. The first nine bouts that day had been won by grapplers from St John Vianney, a private Catholic institution where tuition costs $16,000 (€14,700) a year. In the 10th contest, their representative was narrowly defeated and about then the trouble began. The now obligatory phone camera footage captured a violent brawl, a sprawling affair reminiscent of English football hooligans’ trademark rolling mauls from the 1980s. Except this was middle-class suburban parents losing the plot about adolescent boys wrestling in the singlets of their schools. A snapshot of its time.
With three minutes and 12 seconds remaining in their PIAA basketball play-off, Meadville Bulldogs led the Uniontown Red Raiders by 63-55. That was how it finished. Pennsylvanian officials abandoned the match at that point because, upset about a technical foul, a Uniontown father stormed the area behind the Meadville bench, and this prompted parents from both sides to begin whaling on each other. An untidy scrum of adults were soon unfurling punches in the stand even as a mother clambered to safety with a toddler in her arms. Obviously taking their cue from the grown-ups, some of the high-school players then started to try to fight each other and spectators as melees erupted all around. Several men were eventually taken away in handcuffs.
“The district is disappointed by this unfortunate outcome, as the game was meant to be a showcase of competition and sportsmanship,” said Crawford Central School District Superintendent Dr Jennifer A Gadon. “We remind all fans that respectful and sportsmanlike behaviour is expected at all times.”
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A noble sentiment definitely marked absent from the recent NCA All-Star National Cheerleading Championship at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas. There, a pair of, ahem, proud fathers went toe to toe in a corridor, causing mayhem as little girls curled up in the foetal position on the floor trying to avoid becoming collateral damage in their conflict. Kids in cheerleading costumes could be heard repeatedly pleading, “Stop!”. In the chaos caused by two grown men presumably rowing about cheerleading performances, somebody misinterpreted loud bangs as gunshots and the building was evacuated amid scenes of mass hysteria and near-trampling of children.
From three different states. From three different sports. From the past month. Mere sample cases offering a flavour of a national epidemic. Scarcely a week now goes by without some fresh atrocity of this ilk. No code is untouched. No part of this dystopia is immune. Parental misconduct at youth games is general all over America. For too many, cheering their own kids often morphs into jeering somebody else’s and that invariably leads to confrontation and violence. Over-invested in the outcome of matches, unwilling to accept defeat might benefit their children’s long-term development, a toxic generation of meat-head fathers and carried-away Karens infect sidelines with their perverse need to live vicariously through their spawn.
“We continue to see inappropriate behaviour from adult coaches and spectators at CIF contests,” wrote the California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for high school sports in the state, in its latest proposal to amplify its power to ban offending adults from children’s games. “The current levels of sanctions do not appear to be having enough of an impact. This proposal to increase those sanctions will hopefully gain the attention of those adults who feel it is acceptable to act inappropriately at high school sporting events.”
Authorities are trying to address the problem because one of many consequences of chronic misbehaviour by demented adults is that children’s sports across the country are constantly struggling to find enough referees and umpires. Who would want to earn peanuts officiating a fixture where rabid parents with a warped sense of the importance of every point, goal or foul think supporting their team involves baying for and often shedding blood? And that they are absolutely entitled to feel part of the kids’ action and to try to influence key moments should they desire.
It didn’t use to be like this. Grandparents will testify to that. What we have here seems to be just burgeoning evidence of the slow death of civility in this ailing society. An undercurrent of anger courses through too many people today and youth sport, an arena where kids are supposed to have fun, make friends and learn valuable life skills, has just become one more place for the venting of foul-mouthed spleen and the expression of shrill disdain for others. The more regularly it happens the more socially accepted these antics are becoming. In the way of so much else around here, what used to genuinely appal now just causes a resigned shrug of the shoulders.
In other news, 70 per cent of American children quit organised sport by 13.
