Cheers, jeers and neg. comments at youth sports (opinions)

I stand on the sideline for girls football, club not school, so that's my experience.

The FA have respect rules, e.g. supporters can't stand directly on the sideline but about three foot away behind a respect line. The home team supply a match steward to pick up on any issues and ensure the supporters adhere to the rules.

Supporters can only stand on one side, players and managers stand on the other side, no supporters behind goals or along goal lines.

Every season they have a silent weekend, only the players can call out. Coaches, managers and supporters can only quietly clap a goal. The idea is to just let the players play without interference.

Our coach told our parents not to call out instructions as thay might contradict his game plan. Shouts are pretty much, come on, well done etc.

Generally, most parents attending the games are great, clapping great play or saves. There have been one of two parents that I've rolled my eyes at, the one who whooped like he was at a premier league game and is loud. I won't lie it was very sweet when we ended up playing them in a final (they had not been beaten all season and brought a crowd to watch, clearly expecting a great win) and we won well, they didn't even score against us.

One team hands out sweets after games.

Managers give marks for the other teams sportsmanship which are reported back into the system. At the end of each game, teams will pick a player of the game from the opposing team.

When the goal difference comes beyond five goals the team behind get to add another player.

We were the quiet cheerers for my kids.  If I yelled out something like "good job" or "nice try" or whatever.. I was hardly ever heard and I like it that way.

We were not aggressive. 

We would clap for when they did a good job but not obnoxiously.

If the other team had a REALLY good comeback we would give them a small clap. 

We would never ever boo for another team (even if they were bad sportmans)

We would not interfere with the coaches/refs/etc. even if they were wrong.  We would never interfere with the person keeping score, they were told my a ton of other parents if they were off on the score.  

I HATE those parents.. loud, have to scream at everything, have to mange the team, have to mange the coach, refs... yeah.. and I would always move if I was by one or a group.

No, nothing. The first time we had a silent game it was so weird. Didn't help that it was a damp cold morning at the opposition location. The girls were not sure about the whole silent thing but everyone is more use to it now and it only happens for one weekend a year.  

My son plays soccer and baseball. Both leagues have no coaching from the sidelines rules, and no negative comments/booing rules. We're required to sign a parents' code of conduct in both sports.

DS has been on the same soccer team for five years now (some kids have come and gone, but the same coach and the same core group of kids and parents) and our team is really good about abiding by the rules. Not necessarily true for the teams we play against. It's ridiculous this is elementary level, rec league soccer. There is no excuse for being anything but positive. It's all about the kids learning the sport, having fun and building a habit of activity.

Baseball is a different story. I am not a baseball fan to begin with, and am definitely the minority there. Most of the parents are huge baseball fans and seem to forget they are watching kids, not MLB. I agree that taunting the umps is out of bounds - those are kids too. Parents do a great job of ruining kids' sports.

My son played AA travel hockey in Michigan until high school. It was a small town and basically the same group of kids, who came from near by cities, were on the same team. Pretty much. So, we knew these parents very well. Lots of tournaments that were fun for all. He was a very good player on a very good team. But - - at game time, the parents on our team turned into a$$holes. They would yell at my son Pass The Puck !!! Um... he set your snowflake up 5 times so far this game and nothing happened. After so long, the coaches would tell him to just score. It was horrible. My dd and I, or whoever went to the game with us, sat far away from our own team because I couldn’t stand it. But then after the game we all went out to eat. Or had hotel parties. But game time was the worst. 😬😬😬

I would agree.

When my 15 year old came home from the Basketall game against your school, he said that your fans were yelling “daddy’s money” so they yelled back something like “gpa.” I was shocked to hear that. But my husband, who grew up in NYC and Chicago said that was just par for the course. Not sure if that is due to the differences in where we grew up or not.

My kids play baseball, football and basketball. I’ve heard people say things to/about refs/umps often but generally not to/about players. I might groan or say,”man, our shots just aren’t going in today” but I feel that I say it in a way that is not personal to the player. More of a “can we get a break” or “that’s a bummer.” I do tend to get more feisty about bad calls during basketball—I think because it is so fast paced and my nerves get fried. The game can change in an instant. I also know that I stay more calm when I am with parents from my own team, so I try to avoid sitting next to people from the other town.

A few weeks ago I was sitting next to a few parents from my sons 8th grade team. He is on the A2 team and their kids were on the A1 team, but they mixed the teams up and had them play together (their school teams are generally split similarly to how their travel teams are, so they haven’t played together much). These moms were so negative the whole time and were very personal in their comments. They didn’t single out certain kids, but it was really annoying. A few times I got up and walked away to take a break from it. But at one point they started talking about the “experiment” of mixing the teams and that that was the reason they were losing. I got up and walked away for good at that point. I will remember not to sit by them in the future.


I definitely think it is horrible that 11 year olds (or any age) would say “you suck” as they are going through the line. I hope that if the parents and coach are aware they would address it, but you never know I guess.

I went with my cousin to a 6A Texas HS play off game last year. Her team was basically totally outplayed and were losing badly.

The other team started showboating and playing very aggressive, earning them 4 personal fouls in the last quarter.  The student section started chanting very loudly, That's ok, we are going to college anyway. The ref's sent the police over. 

 My cousin said at that level of football, yes, it is expected and par for the course.   I'll stay in my little town that the crowds basically sit and socialize instead of follow the game.

Jennifer

Yikes, that is AWFUL behavior by the kids.

I do see some bad behavior by parents, usually. I think your guidelines are appropriate.

My grandson is a 2nd year squirt on a traveling hockey team, too, but in Montana.

Same here! I’m like workingclassdog, I’m supportive and encouraging. I don’t boo the other team or players, even when I go to pro events.

I was referring to the SRR game, but I have noticed that even at the junior high level there is a lot more tension when playing any of the local teams. Overall, I feel like “our” teams (meaning the Sartell teams my kids have played on) are generally more quiet than the other teams we play, especially for baseball, football and school basketball. To the point where sometimes I feel like people aren’t engaged enough. But that does differ among teams and different parents. And it has changed a little as the kids have gotten older.

I think tournaments can be hard. Several games in a row, everyone wanting the team to do well, adrenaline gets going, etc. I get a lot more anxious during tournaments than I do for regular games.

I’m not that familiar with hockey but your posts have helped me to see the stress of being a goalie mom. That would be especially difficult if people are saying negative things about him, or putting the outcome of the game mostly on him. Does he feel that pressure?

It’s interesting to me to hear what people think of each town/school, or at least what people think other people think. If that makes sense. Lol. My husband always talks about how other schools all hate Sartell and just want to beat us because they think everyone is rich and snooty. I don’t know if that is true or not, and really don’t care. I don’t see that, but the high school I went to also had that reputation so maybe I just don’t see it.

My son did say that at the SRR game, an administrator did tell the kids to stop some of the chants, but I don’t think it was effective.

This year when playing at north, a parent was very vocal during the entire game, but at the end it was down to a free throw and he led the students that were there in kicking the metal part of the bleachers while the kid was shooting. He missed the shot. The athletic director stopped the game and said that the kid could shoot the free throw again. He made it that time, so we actually won. The dad was pissed, but the AD said that they are teaching more than basketball. So, at least in those situations the school staff did try to focus on sportsmanship, which is good.

Cake eaters? Cmon, cake eaters is a well-established benign hockey chirp! Gotta love the mighty ducks.

I’ll add more when I’m not on iPad.

My daughter played hockey for several years - house league, and one season of all-stars. She's never done travel for several reasons - cost, time commitment and the behavior you mentioned included.

She skated out for a few seasons, then switched to goalie. She was actually a pretty good goalie. But on teams where they didn't have anyone who could score, they lost. When she played all-stars, they had one guy who could score - against the house league teams. But in all stars, he couldn't get around the better players from the other rinks. They ended up getting destroyed constantly. Her home rink wasn't as well-off as the other home rinks from the other side of town. Those teams had more players who could afford the private coaching, some of them had parents who had played high level hockey, etc. Our rink...didn't.

At one game, they were blown out 9-0. One of the dads from the other teams kept screaming at his son that he needed to score MORE. He already had like 5 goals. And he started yelling that "their goalie sucks, take advantage of it!" The goalie was my daughter - a 10-year old girl. And this guy thought that this was the highlight of his week, being able to watch his son destroy a 10-year old girl. Yeah, you're a great dad and a great representative for the sport of hockey. After the game, I went into the bathroom before starting the long drive home. That rink has weird bathrooms, they share some of the ventilation system with the locker room on the other side of the wall. I got to hear their coach telling them that they could have done better - that 9-0 wasn't quite good enough. And I wondered what the purpose of hockey was for that team - just to win games? because USAH tells us it's about learning sportsmanship, developing skills, challenging yourself, and being a good teammate and leader. Now I found out that it wasn't, it was just about scoring goals.

She didn't play all stars after that and only played one more season of house. She didn't really want to be involved in checking, which they start doing at 12. She just started playing again - we have an adult women's pick-up on weekends and she's allowed to play in net even though she's technically not old enough yet. It's SO different from house/all stars. The women don't take it seriously, the players on both sides will compliment her on good saves, and she's having fun again. When newer players get the puck, we don't put a lot of defense on them, we let them skate and shoot because every woman on the ice knows exactly what it's like to never touch the puck during a game - most of us are in coed league, where the ratio is 90-10 and the men don't like to pass to the women very much. She's still a decent goalie (although I've scored on her a few times, which she won't admit!). It turns out that as soon as you stop keeping score, being a beast on the ice stops being a draw. Go figure!

I also play in beer league. Some teams/players REALLY care about scoring and will celly even when they're up by 8. There are some nice people in beer league, but there are some real yahoos as well. I've had a guy take a slap shot at me from 10 feet away - I'm not a goalie, I was standing to the side of the net, not screening the goalie - he did it purposely because he was mad that his team got DQed for using an ineligible player in a playoff game the season before. Sportsmanship, amirite? One season I had three women on my team and one of the guys on the other team decided that he was going to take us out - knock us down, just basically be a jerk. This season, a player went after the other woman on my team and threatened her. Later in the game, he hooked/tripped me. when I complained to a friend who plays on that team, his excuse was that he wasn't targeting ME, he had no idea that there were two different women on our team. Oh, even better...so he WAS targeting the woman he threatened, but got me instead because he didn't realize that we were different people?

So it doesn't go away just because it's adults. Some men are just really poor sports. The only thing that does improve with beer league is that you don't have tons of parents watching. Although come to think of it...we did have the girlfriend of the guy who hooked me in the stands, she was yelling at the ref because her man got a well-deserved penalty. Not for hooking me, but because he went up behind one of our guys and sucker-punched him. Yeah, there are some real assholes who get their identity from what they do on the ice.