If Parents and Coaches were angels

To paraphrase Madison, if parents and coaches were angels today, youth sports programs would not need to regulate the behavior of the relatively few adults whose antics can ruin everyone else’s fun and fulfillment. Adults with solid values, however, have their work cut out for them because not everyone is an angel. Parents and coaches must expect sportsmanship from themselves and their children, but they must also insist that schools and youth-league boards of directors hold all families to high standards.

Now that the behavior of many adults in youth sports has been spiraling downward for at least the past two decades, polls and surveys present a “glass half empty, glass half full” panorama. On the plus side, disruptive parents constitute only a distinct minority in most programs; on the negative side, however, even a troublesome minority can upset an entire program or team.

All in all, the polls and surveys do not paint a pretty picture.

Last year, Reuters News and the market research company Ipsos jointly conducted a 22-nation poll that ranked parents in the United States as the world’s “worst behaved” parents at children’s sports events. Sixty percent of U.S. adults who had attended youth sports contests reported that had seen parents become verbally or physically abusive toward coaches or officials; runners-up were parents in India (59%), Italy (55%), Argentina (54%), Canada (53%) and Australia (50%).

“It’s ironic that the United States, which prides itself in being the most civilized country in the world, has the largest group of adults having witnessed abusive behavior at children’s sporting events,” said an Ipsos senior vice president. The Reuters/Ipsos poll confirmed earlier estimates of adult excesses in youth sports. In a Survey USA poll in Indianapolis, Indiana, for example, 55% of parents said that they had seen other parents engaging in verbal abuse at youth sporting events, and 21% said that they had seen a physical altercation between other parents.

In a Minnesota Amateur Sports Commission survey, 45.3% of youth-leaguers said that adults had called them names, yelled at them, or insulted them while they were playing in a game. Twenty-one percent of the young athletes said that they had been pressured to play while injured; 17.5% said that an adult had hit, kicked or slapped them during a game; and 8.2% said that they had been pressured to harm others intentionally.

In a survey conducted by Sports Illustrated for Kids magazine, 74% of youth athletes reported that they had watched out-of-control adults at their games; 37% of the athletes had watched parents yelling at children, 27% had watched parents yelling at coaches or officials, 25% had watched coaches yelling at officials or children, and 4% had watched violence by adults. In a survey of adults and players conducted by SportingKid magazine, more than 84% of respondents reported that they had watched parents act violently (shouting, berating, or using abusive language) toward children, coaches or officials during youth sports events.

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We need to be careful about what these polls and surveys mean and what they do not mean. The fact that high percentages of respondents report having seen disruptive behavior at youth sports events underscores the conclusion, stated by a national summit on Raising Community Standards in Children’s Sports, that youth sports is a “hotbed of chaos, violence and mean-spiritedness.” The high percentages, however, do not mean that equally high percentages of adults engage in such behavior.

Even in the greater society, a rising national violent crime rate in a particular year does not change the fact that only a relatively few Americans commit violent crimes. Americans nevertheless find a rising national violent crime rate disturbing because the misconduct of a few can affect the many. We should similarly find the rate of adult disruption disturbing in youth sports, where the misconduct of a few can also affect the many.

These polls and surveys confirm what most of us already sense – that adult behavior in youth sports could stand some cleaning up. The National Alliance for Youth Sports estimates that about 15% of youth league games feature a confrontation between parents or coaches and officials, a figure that seems realistic — and uncomfortably high — from my experience.

If all parents and coaches were angels, we would not need national organizations and influential individuals who advocate higher ethical standards in youth sports. If we could count on Americans to respect sportsmanship without prodding, we probably would not even need National Sportsmanship Day each year. Sports remains a valuable experience for most children who compete, but we still need vigilant parents and coaches who seek to teach children life skills — sportsmanship, respect and civility — as they learn the skills of the game.

[Citations to the polls and surveys recited in this column are available in a 32-page article I have written for the Seton Hall Sports and Entertainment Law Journal: “Player Safety in Youth Sports: Sportsmanship and Respect As an Injury-Prevention Strategy.” The article will appear this autumn, but the manuscript is available for downloading now at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1807404 ]

http://askcoachwolff.com/2011/05/13/if-parents-and-coaches-were-angels/