Unhealthy Competition
By Derek Scholes

For some parents, there’s no doubt about it: It is all about whether their kids win or lose

“Get them out!”
“Come on, Matthew!”
“Find the zone!”
“Right to Casey’s glove!”
“If he wants to swing, give him something to swing at!”
“Get it, please!”
“Good eye!”
“Come on Matty, finish!”
“They wanna come home!”
“ . . . catch it, Catch It! CATCH IT!!!”

Jo Rivers

You only have to listen to a group of parents watching their kids playing a game of baseball at the Babe Ruth playing fields on Woodlawn Avenue in Albany to discover that, for some of them, it is anything but “just a game.” Palms sweat, fingernails are gnawed, lips are chewed. One dad stands alone hunched over his notebook, scoring every pitch and talking to himself. Another springs from his bleacher seat and roars when his son gets a base hit. Mobile phones ring with calls from absent parents anxious for an update. And there are the endless calls from the bleachers to “Matty.”

The bleachers are packed on this beautiful sunny day. Just as avid followers of professional baseball teams wear replica shirts of the teams they support, one set of parents is bedecked in matching red shirts, their chests boasting that their sons are champions and their backs proudly displaying their sons’ names and numbers. There are, in fact, more red shirts in the bleachers than in the dugout.

The Red Shirts are indeed dedicated fans. Prior to the playing of America’s tinniest version of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the beginning of the game, one parent tells me, “I have four children, so some weeks I spend every night watching one of them play a sport.” In fact, I find that all these parents watch their sons play two or three times a week. They do this to show their support for their sons playing baseball because playing a sport “is a good ‘anti-drug,’ ” and it teaches their children to cooperate with others and be responsible members of a team. The parents agree that organizing their time to make sure they see all the games is demanding, but the general feeling is, “Hey, they’re only young once.”

Since July 5, 2000, the behavior of parents watching children’s sport has been the subject of increased media attention across the United States. On that day, the escalation of an argument between two Massachusetts parents during their sons’ hockey practice resulted in the shocking death of one of the parents. What started as a routine session of hockey drills concluded with parents and children watching Thomas Junta, 42, a parent of two, beat to death Michael Costin, 40, a single parent of four, on the ice. In January of this year, Junta was sentenced by a Massachusetts judge to six to 10 years in state prison for involuntary manslaughter.

This tragic incident caused people to question the way parents behave during children’s sporting events. Mike Barnicle of the Daily News commented that, “Anyone who has ever witnessed a single second of the bizarre behavior that too often occurs at the edge of those places where America’s children play their games cannot have been shocked that a Massachusetts man was buried . . . after being beaten to death by another parent at the conclusion of a kids’ hockey event.” CNN.com quoted an umpire as saying, “I have told more than one parent to be quiet and let their children play a game. . . . I believe that parents are the root of the problem, and it will not be too far off in the future when they will not be allowed to attend the games.” Bob Still, a spokesman for the National Association of Sports Officials, observed, “It is a trend, and it is on the rise. Not only is it on the rise, but the type of violence has become more violent.” Fred Engh, president of the National Alliance for Youth Sports, claimed that the grim, competitive attitude that leads to such conflicts is driving kids out of sports. “When 70 percent of the children that play sports drop out by the age of 13, that should tell us something. The number one reason they said in a survey was that it ceased to be fun,” he said.

Since the Junta case came to light, there have been an increasing number of reports of “sideline rage” and “rink rage.” Last year, the Los Angeles Times reported that two coaches and a parent spectator had been banned by the American Youth Soccer Organization for their part in a 30-adult brawl at the end of a game in Southern California when parents flooded onto the field. According to ChannelOne.com, in Salt Lake City, two women assaulted another mother after a dispute during a championship baseball game; the woman reportedly was beaten to the extent that Salt Lake City police said she was unconscious when they arrived at the scene. The Associated Press reported how a father in San Fernando, Calif., was sentenced to 45 days in jail for threatening to kill a coach who had removed his 11-year-old son from a baseball game after the third inning.

In the time following the Junta killing, we have also seen a high school football game in Port Orange, Fla., turn into a 100-person brawl of moms, dads, players and coaches. A soccer match between 8- and 9-year-olds of Staten Island, N.Y., and North Hunterton, N.J., developed into a fistfight after an argument about whether a coach can stand behind a goal during a penalty shoot-out. And in Miami, a fight between parents and coaches interrupted a baseball game between 4- and 5-year-olds after about 20 men charged the field. The National Association of Sports Officials recorded 150 assaults against youth-sports officials in the year 2000, a massive increase compared with the 30 they had recorded five years previously. The association now offers assault insurance to its members.

Although the Capital Re-gion has not witnessed any major violence at children’s sports venues, a local retired coach says he has seen how parents’ emotions can get the better of them when they’re watching their kids play sport. Before he became an assistant coach of the Rensselaer Women’s Hockey Team at RPI, Jim Feck spent six years coaching 10- to 13-year-old children in baseball at the New Scotland Kiwanis Club; for 15 years, he was a hockey coach for the Troy-Albany Youth Hockey Association. He speaks with the authority of a man who’s seen it all: “I’ve seen parents arguing with parents, parents yelling at the coach or at the umpire, or parents having a go at their kids,” he says.

One incident he remembers clearly was when, “at the end of one particular hockey game, parents came over the glass, because that was the only way to get onto the ice, and started fighting with each other and the officials.” However, he emphasizes that violent incidents were rare, and that he did not have a problem with most parents. He attributes this, in part, to the relationship he built up with the parents. “At the beginning of every season, I gave the parents of my new team a sheet stating the objectives of teaching their kids hockey. Top of the list was for the kids to have fun. The last and least-important objective on the list was for the team to win. All kids, regardless of ability, played the same amount of time.” Feck believes that stating his rules and goals when he met each new team avoided potential confrontations later in the season.

Of course, the vast majority of youth-sporting events do pass without violent incident, but stories of violent, angry parents are indicative of the increasing passion with which many of them now watch their kids’ sports. In questioning 500 adults from a five-county area in South Florida, Survey USA found that 82 percent of respondents believed that parents watching youth sports are too aggressive. Furthermore, 72 percent thought that aggressive parents should be banned from youth sports. Other research suggests that parents place more emphasis on winning than their children do, and that kids prefer to play as part of a losing team than to sit on the bench as part of a winning team. At the baseball game I observed at the Babe Ruth playing fields, parents told me that their kids were not upset if they lost. Yet the same parents admitted that watching their kids tied their stomachs in knots.

“The parents are more concerned about the team winning than the kids are,” says Feck. He describes how one season he was coaching a group of children, and during the season, he’d promised them that if they won a game, he’d take them out for ice cream. Unfortunately for the kids—and the local ice-cream stand—they hardly won a game all year. At the end of the last game, when they’d lost yet again, Feck gave a little talk to them about how the game and the season had gone, and he asked if there were any questions. “The first and only question was, ‘Can we still go for ice cream?’ ” he recalls.

This surely is a unique situation in sports, where the spectators are more concerned by the result than the actual competitors. A Southern California sports psychologist interviewed on WebMD.com believes that one explanation is that parents hope to help nurture a little Derek Jeter or Mia Hamm, and dream that one day, their child might win a college scholarship. Dr. Darrell J. Burnett says, “If your kid is out there, and a ball goes through your kid’s legs and he makes an error, it’s not just, ‘We’ll get them next time.’ For some parents, it’s like, ‘What if a scout is here?’ So then it’s not just a game.”

Feck adds, “It’s the Garrison Keillor mentality, that all children are above average. It’s a reflection of society. You only have to look at the back of cars: ‘My child is an honors student at such-and-such a school.’ Another thing is that many parents don’t understand the game, so rather than just enjoying watching their child play, they focus on the result.”

Not putting too much emphasis on winning is something that many coaches of youth teams are extremely aware of. Dave Wall, a youth coach of the Bethlehem Travel Soccer program, admits that ensuring that all players enjoy themselves while trying to help his team win is often a fine balancing act. Although he says that both he and his team like to win, “Winning at all costs is not necessarily a good life skill for third graders to learn,” Wall says. “Sometimes a player really, really wants to play goal, but couldn’t catch the ball if their life depended on it. In a case like that, I will put them in goal if we are really getting crushed or really winning. However, if it is one of those situations where that player absolutely, positively has to play goal, I’ll let them play. And I’ve been there before, where I’ve decided to let someone play, and it means losing the game. Losing a game in the grand scheme of things just doesn’t matter. All that being said, if we are playing a good, tight competitive game against an opponent with whom we are well matched, I will play to win. All the kids will play, but I might play two or three of my solid players more than the rest.”

The atmosphere becomes tenser at the Babe Ruth playing fields as we reach the later innings, with each strike and base-hit drawing greater applause from one set of parents, and causing silent frustration on the other bleachers. The team now pitching is losing to the Red Shirts’ sons by a couple of runs, and their opponents are threatening to score, with runners on base yet again. A fly ball hangs for what seems like eternity above the kid at right field, and the crowd holds its breath. A catch will swing the momentum of the game to the fielding side, but dropping the ball will be sure to give the opposition another run or two. The ball slips through the boy’s glove and fingers, and, as he wishes the ground would swallow him up, the Red Shirts collectively clap, whoop and cheer at his expense.

One person who believes that this kind of situation teaches children all the wrong lessons about life is Alfie Kohn, the author of the book No Contest, a critique of competition and its destructive potential. Kohn examines how children are affected by playing competitive games. “It’s teaching the kids that you should celebrate other peoples’ failure,” he says. “The kids are learning to pay lip service to ideas like sportsmanship, even while at a deeper level understanding that the real goal is to be victorious.”

Kohn believes that bad sportsmanship is so widespread that he has come to the conclusion that the problem is not just a few over-enthusiastic parents or out-of-control kids, but is competitive sport itself. “When you see enough examples, naturally it has to occur to you to ask whether it’s just poor sportsmanship, a few bad apples, or whether it’s the logical consequence of setting up an activity where one side has to fail in order for the other to succeed,” he notes.

When asked if he agrees with parents who believe that sports teach children how to work as part of a team and learn about responsibility, Kohn says, “If parents are sincere in that their primary concern is to help their children learn to be part of a team, to cooperate, then you certainly wouldn’t need to have competition. Rather, you would have kids participating in genuinely cooperative activities, where you get all the good stuff without all the ugly stuff. Right now, competing against other people is the only game in town. If you want your kids to get some fresh air and exercise and learn teamwork, it’s got to be baseball, soccer, hockey and so on.” He suggests that parents turn to books, such as The Second Cooperative Sports and Games Book by Terry Orlick, for alternative games for kids that are challenging and fun without requiring a competitive element.

Kohn’s controversial opinions clash with the more conventional belief that children’s sports are largely harmless, or even that they help build character and serve as valuable preparation for life in a competitive American culture. This conventional view was best summed up by Hillary Clinton in a television address she gave at the Meadowlands in New Jersey in 1999. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Women’s World Cup soccer competition, Clinton said that she hoped that soccer would teach children “to be competitive not only on the sports field, but also in the classroom and in the workplace.” Although Kohn’s views will not stop any games from being played in sports halls and playing fields, he raises some interesting questions about the merits of teaching children competitive sport. He points out that, as soon as you set up a game in which the ultimate goal is to decide winners and losers, there will always be unhappy children.

Parents involve themselves ever more in the sports of their children these days, whether it’s watching every game from the bleachers, driving them to and from practice sessions, coaching their child’s team, paying for equipment, or spending the night away with their child on a trip with a traveling team. Considering this great investment, we should not be too surprised when many parents become emotionally involved in how successful the team and their children are on the field of play. However, according to Jim Feck, we adults have to keep our priorities right, remembering that the most important barometer of youth team success is whether the children are enjoying themselves or not. He says, “The key to success is in keeping the experience intensely about the kids and not clouded by the egos, memories, unfulfilled aspirations or unreasonable expectations of the adults involved.”

As the sun begins to set and the air cools, the Woodlawn Avenue game reaches its climax. The team playing the sons of the Red Shirts now trails 5-1 in the bottom of the final inning. The batter knows it’s now or never and, throwing caution to the wind, swings at the next pitch as hard as he can. But he can only watch as his hopes of being a home-run hero loop into the air and land in an infielder’s glove. For this batter, the disappointment proves to be too much. Frustrated by his failure, his emotions boil over. He throws down his bat, slams his helmet on the grass as he walks off the field red-faced, and tosses his gloves over the dugout. He does not look like he is having much fun.