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Player Safety: Not Just About Coaching and Equipment

If you've ever questioned why parents' sideline behavior matters, read on...

One of the most important papers I've read on the topic of sportsmanship and its relationship to player safety is this one:

PLAYER SAFETY IN YOUTH SPORTS: SPORTSMANSHIP AND RESPECT AS AN INJURY-PREVENTION STRATEGY by Douglas E. Abrams, Associate Professor of Law, University of Missouri School of Law

In it, Mr. Abrams recounts this story --

The night was November 3, 1999, and only seconds
remained in a junior varsity hockey game between two bitter
local rivals, New Trier High School and Glenbrook North
High School, at the Rinkside Sports Ice Arena in Gurnee, a
suburb of Chicago.1 New Trier was comfortably ahead, 7–4, in
the teams’ first encounter since Glenbrook North had edged
New Trier 3–2 for the Illinois State Junior Varsity Title a
season earlier.2

Junior varsity contests do not normally provide lasting
memories in any sport, but this early-November game would
be different. Beginning shortly after the opening faceoff,
“violence flared repeatedly” and “the mood grew ugly.”3
Eyewitnesses would later describe the game as “an intense
battle,”4 with each team’s parents and students heckling rival
fans and players.5 The teams themselves traded taunts and
squared off in altercations, unrestrained by their respective
coaches6—leaders that pediatric professionals recognize as
“the most important individual[s] for maintaining safety” in
youth leagues.7

One coach reportedly left the bench and strode onto the ice
in the middle of the game to confront a referee,8 and the
Glenbrook North coach allegedly “incit[ed] his players to ‘take
special action’” against New Trier’s fifteen-year-old
sophomore, cocaptain Neal Goss, whose three goals helped
seal his team’s ultimate victory.9 In total, the referees called
sixteen penalties,10 a particularly high number for a junior
varsity hockey game.11

When the final buzzer sounded to end the contest, or
within a second or two thereafter, a fifteen-year-old
Glenbrook North player skated full speed across the ice,
blindsided Neal Goss, and cross-checked12 him headfirst into
the rink’s sideboards.13 “This is what you get for messing,”14
the player allegedly said as Goss laid on the ice, permanently
paralyzed from the neck down.15

(to read the entire paper, click here)

As a parent, I can't read that story without getting chills -- and not the good kind. I've been at games that have gotten that heated. I've been at games where I was sure someone was going to get hurt, as they inevitably did (though thankfully not catastrophically), because everyone who should have been in control just wasn't.

In the summer of 2010, it was an absurdly cold day in Minnesota (hey, it was summer -- it gets warm here then!). I was supervising a semi-final game for the Youth Lacrosse of Minnesota state tournament. The game was an odd match-up -- the Red team had a deep bench of smaller kids; the Blue team had a short bench of really big kids. During that time in Minnesota, the district where a team played its regular season sometimes had an impact on how stringently the rules were followed all year. Come state tournament time, some teams were unpleasantly surprised to see rules being called that hadn't been. (Consistent standards have since been adopted and more strictly enforced.)

The result was that the Blue team felt they were getting cheated by the officials. They weren't getting any calls to go their way; many times during the game they had a guy or two in the penalty box. Tensions rose. Parents got angry. Kids got pissed. A kid on the Red team got injured. Then another one. Then the Blue team got two penalties at the same time.

In short, sportsmanship was a goner because the parents and players were mad and out for blood. (I will say, though, that the coaches weren't the ones causing issues. Both staffs were attempting to settle things down, as were the officials.)

With just four minutes left in the fourth quarter, a big player from the Blue team (who, as you might expect, was losing) had enough. He ran onto the field as fast as he could and went straight for the kid from the other team, who had the ball. He decked him. Hard.

The chaos that ensued was horrible. An official had to wrestle the offender to the ground and hold him there to keep him from hitting anyone else. Coaches ran onto the field to check on the injured player. Players from both benches rushed out to join in the fight. Parents were screeching and threatening each other. It was five minutes of hell, followed by ten minutes of sorting out the damage.

In the end, the injured player was okay. The Blue team had two players ejected and three in the box (two to serve bench penalties and one because he was there at the start of the fracas). The game was essentially over.

Where did this game between 13 and 14 year olds go wrong?

Here's what I think:

1) In one team's district, there was less emphasis placed on adhering to the rules. All the teams in that area decided, probably through omission, that they would play a looser lacrosse.
2) At the state tournament, the Blue team felt picked on because they were getting dinged every time they did something they could get away with all season. They felt the other team had an unfair advantage.
3) Parents took up swords by jawing at each other all game.
4) Players from both teams taunted each other.

Despite the attempts by coaches and officials to stem the anger-tide, one player decided it was time to get revenge. It's only by sheer luck that someone didn't get more seriously, or even permanently, injured.

For anyone who thinks equipment safety or better coaching are the only solutions, these two stories show that parents play as big a role in games getting out of control as players, coaches, or officials. In the lacrosse game, the parents could have prevented this by enforcing respect for the game's rules with their kids and the coaches all season. Once at the state tournament, the parents could have explained to their kids that they had to adjust their play to fit the rules. The parents could have kept their mouths shut and not engaged in their own battle up in the stands.

Sportsmanship starts and ends at home. What we see at games is just a reflection of parents' basic attitudes about appropriate game-time behavior.

Do you believe parents have the power or the responsibility to change the course of a team's enjoyment of a game? Let us know...below.

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