“I paid my four bucks!”
This is a common saying when a parent or fan is approached at a high school or youth sporting event. Often it is a volunteer or a teacher who signed up forsupervision duty that confronts an unruly fan, the response is always the same. People think buying a ticket to the event provides the entitlement to say and do whatever they want.
It is the sameat youth events, parents pay their portion of a team entry fee, a possible parking fee, and are often stuck at the venue and charged top dollar for over-priced concession food. The consumer believesthat yelling, screaming, and berating of officials is their right. This thinking has caused some serious problems over the past three decades and that is starting to put our high school and youthsporting contests in jeopardy.
The WIAA, Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association, the organization that governs high school sports in that state issued a warning letter recently. Theletter is a call to parents to curb behavior, an appeal to lay off the officials. There is a shortage in every state across the country and that shortage is now affecting the athleticadministrators’ ability to hire officials for contests.
The referee shortage did not start at the high school level. The men and women who referee high school games are seasonedveterans. They have a passion for officiating and they are staying connected to a sport that has meant so much to them. These experienced officials survived their own developmental stages ofofficiating and overcame the heckling that is causing many young referees to hang up the whistle before they even have a chance to enjoy it.
I have been to 3rd and 4th grade recreational sportcontests — remember this epidemic transcends across every youth sport — where young referees are screamed at for missing a call. Often, at these contests, the referees are middle school boys andgirls helping out their youth club. They are making a few dollars but they are learning how to give back to the programs that are helping them develop.
When I was an athletic administrator,our community had issues with fan behavior, parents screaming at referees and making spectacles of themselves. As an athletic department we attempted many strategies to help curb the behavior. Puttinga sportsmanship comment in the event program, making numerous public service announcements, and even listing fan expectations — did nothing to curb behavior.
Often times at high school boysbasketball events, there was a group of older male supporters who would sit in the front row of the bleachers, opposite the team, and harass the officials and make comments to the opposing players.This same group of men had been demonstrating this behavior for two decades. They were supporters of the former coach and become a fixture within the program. Trying to curb that behavior led tocomplaints to higher up administration and often a directive to the athletic department to “lighten up” a little. Big boosters and the old guard still had some influence and the problemcontinued.
Often, the volunteer or minimally paidsupervision staff will try and curb behavior and the disrespect they receive chases them away from filling those positions as well. We tried a yellow/red card at high school basketball games so oursupervision staff did not become involved in a “situation.” An unruly fan would be given a yellow card with our school logo on the face side of the card. On the back side would bea behavior warning with the state statute number for disorderly conduct. The card would state that if a red card was handed to them they would need to leave the facility or risk a ticket fromour school resource officer.
This process can help your supervision people avoid confrontation, but if all the administrators covering the different events are not fully clued-in and on board,the program can fail. It will also fail when the person who eventually receives a red card is a “friend” of the program.
How do we correct this problem? First and foremost we haveto protect our young officials. These young kids, learning the game, are our future referees. We must take an attitude of gratitude when we witness an athletic contest at any level. Instead of runningthe officials off the field or court after games, thank them for giving up their evening or weekend to officiate your contest.
And most of all, stand up against this behavior. When there is anunruly fan in the crowd, find the supervising staff and get it corrected. If you are confident in your ability to maintain control, have a conversation with the referee abuser and educate them on theproblem.
This situation is urgent and reaching epidemic proportions. Let’s keep our kids playing!
(Greg Winkler coaches varsity soccer in Florida. He has 15years experience as an athletic administrator, and led a large youth organization for over 20 years. He is the author of Coaching a Season of Significance: A Soccer Coaches’ Companion to All Challenges of a Year.)
Play without fans needs to be implemented much sooner these days.
W.s., IMHO, every parent that signs up their kid(s) should be informed by the soccer league officials/coaches during a group meeting of the consequences of their misbavior toward a referee. Parent code of conduct needs to be spelleed out at the outset of a season and enforced. Your suggestion is a typical band aide that solves nothing; especially when most parents drive their kids to the game.
I see your point about driving kids to games. However, they won’t need to if you don’t have officials. Pretty much everywhere these days there are sportsmanship announcements and agreed upon consequences. Still the problem persists. I’ve officiated 4 different sports and it’s not getting better. As the author points out, seasoned referees are more equipped to deal with unruliness. There are fewer and fewer young people willing to subject themselves to the atmosphere. I don’t blame them. Your seeming reluctance to what will in fact curb future conduct, suggests you’ve never officiated and/or you think things are fine. With respect bg.
The leagues have to get serious about this, and so far they’re not. Referees are just a cost of doing (their) business. And since most leagues (and league boards) are run by coaches, we can’t really be surprised, can we? All I’ve seen are pathetic slaps on the wrist. Fix the league attitudes on referees, fix the leagues.
What is even worse is when these unruly parents become parent-coaches and pass on their rude behavior and ignorance of TLOG to a new generation. Controlling unruly fans is a responsibility of the competition officials and the site officials, not the referees, not the coaches.
On the contrary W.S., I officiated games and had experience with unruly parents. After ejecting the parent from the spectator area everything calmed down. If that didn’t work, the next resort would be to have the coach remove the player from the the pitch until the end of the game. BTW, there should be one seasoned referee at travel game.
Basketball with yellow and red cards, I have never heard of this before. Maybe the anti soccer people are learning something from a sport they do not support. This is good.
Well first it’s always the same coach that scream at officials thinking he (not her) will get calls in his favor if he continues to argue every call. Second the same coach team parents think that okey since the coach set the tone for his team/parents.
referees put a note on the game page of unruly coaches but I don’t think the league do anything to the coaches that are constantly misbehaving unless the ref have sent the coach or parent off the pitch.
until coaches gets real training in how to behave and leagues start to enforce any coach missbehaving forced to take positive coaching classes.
that would put a stop on it.
HS players that get red carded have to take a class in sportsmanship so why not coaches and parents before they can attend a game. Seems simple to me.
All very reasonable, Uffe, which is why is won’t happen. Who makes up USSF voting members? Coaches. What’s the fastest way Carlos can p1ss off the voting members? Ask them to do stuff they don’t want to do. When we complain about the lack of change at the USSF, we have to ask ourselves whose behavior it is we’d like to change. Coaches are coaches, regardless of sex or race. The magic of diversity doesn’t extend to the TYPES of members USSF has, and that is part of the problem. Carlos has no huevos, so we can’t expect much more than committies.