Three people from Wisconsin got cited by police this month because they let their pride get hurt and lashed out at each other — at their kids’ wrestling tournament, of all places.
The video, which was reported on by the Appleton Post-Crescent, shows the grown men and women arguing about a match before escalating into profanity and fisticuffs, spilling out onto the mat where a match is taking place and forcing the kids to stop and watch. When you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes and theirs came in the form of citations for disorderly conduct and battery.
What is wrong with people? Why is it so hard for some folks to just roll with the punches (figuratively speaking, that is) and focus on positive reinforcement for their own kids, maybe even their teammates as well? This is something I ask myself often knowing full well I may never find the answer, even when something I’ve seen isn’t this extreme.
Every good parent out there wants what’s best for their kids. It just looks to me like some people have a really warped interpretation of what that means. It never ceases to amaze me when a parent or parents watch their kids play sports once or twice and somehow come away from it with their own egos inflated. It’s one thing to be your kid’s number one fan and hope their athletic talents can help them get somewhere in life, but another thing entirely when you’re living so vicariously through your kids that it becomes more about you than them. You may not even realize you’re doing it, or you may want to deny it, but getting so aggressive about your kids only makes people think you care more about your own sense of pride than their accomplishments.
Other than straight-up violence like what went down in Wisconsin this month, I’ve seen just about everything. Ever hear that stereotype about youth sports parents who spend entire games verbally harassing coaches for keeping their kids out of the game for too long when they’re “really” the best players on their teams? That happens a lot. Do parents ever go overboard on their kids’ hype train when they accomplish something more than just suiting up? You bet they do, and they also occasionally try and take advantage of sportswriters like me. I once had a recurring an Athlete of the Week submission that started with one phone call and, when I didn’t get right on it after one week, got to the point where my editor and I were getting phone calls from a person who always claimed to be from another town and happened to watch this kid play in games while visiting Plant City — but whose story changed depending on which of us they were talking to. With my editor, they knew the kid’s name. When I got a phone call after she did, they didn’t know the kid’s name but did know the jersey number. We were able to determine we’d been contacted by the same person and, adding in the fact that the kid’s coach never returned my calls, decided not to go through with it.
For the record, I do encourage parents or their friends to submit candidates for Athlete of the Week. I just ask that if it’s one of you doing it, you also give me contact info for their coaches so I can talk to them, too. Helicopter parents are the reason why, when I can’t find a kid’s stats on MaxPreps.com, haven’t heard about them from a coach or haven’t seen them do great things in their sport with my own eyes, I want to hear from a credible witness to back up the claims. I know a hyperlocal paper’s Athlete of the Week section isn’t as glamorous as getting featured in USA Today for the same accomplishments, but I try to keep that section as merit-based as possible so the athletes can feel like they’ve earned something when they show up in the paper that week.
Look, it’s not hard at all to be a good sports parent and having a Marv Marinovich mentality won’t get you or your kids anywhere. You just have to stay positive with your kids at all times and not let the crazy folks who ruin it for everyone else get under your skin. Let the coaches coach and the players play: you only need to be a fan.more value in that, at least to me, than in telling people I’ve made it because I make a lot of money selling Cutco knives and you can, too, if you give me five minutes of your time.
That would also mean I have to make that list. So I’ve thought about it a bit and, surprise, many things on my wishlist revolve around sports in some way. Here’s what I’m looking to get done by Dec. 31.
I know this is pretty situational, but I’m hoping to be able to go cover one of our teams in a state championship game or series again. Going to Stetson for Plant City’s soccer title this time last year and making the trip to Fort Myers to watch Strawberry Crest play in their first Final Four were very cool experiences, albeit with different end results and story tones. The energy you get from just being there, even if you’re acting as a neutral observer like I do, is unlike anything else out there. So I wish you all good luck this year — and not just for my own selfish reasons. Be the best you can be and do it for the glory.
Another thing I really want to do is a deep dive into another Plant City-area sports team or sports-related item of interest. Those of you who have been reading my stuff for the last five-plus years know I love me some sports history, and you’re not even the ones stuck in the Observer newsroom with me when someone’s got a binder full of baseball cards and I’m reciting weird facts about half of the players I see in there. In fact, I think most of my historical features for this paper have been related to baseball. I’m looking for something old to make new again, whether it’s baseball or not, and am open to any and all suggestions. If you’ve got something I’d be interested in, please send an email my way sometime.
Unrelated to work, I’m interested in learning to play ultimate frisbee. Well, I guess it’s just called ultimate these days, but whatever. I spent years in willful ignorance of it because it seemed like such a dorky thing to do when I was younger and I confess I had never even tried to watch anyone play. I thought it was another name for disc golf. I covered a tournament out here last month and actually got to see it live for the first time, and I have to admit I was so wrong about it. It looks like a lot of fun to play and I totally understand why it’s such a hit with the college crowd. It might be something I look into this summer.
My last thing is that I want to go to more sports games just for fun. It’s not that I don’t enjoy myself at a high school game, but watching sports when you’re working as I do is much different than getting to be somewhere as a fan and not having to worry about copy or deadlines or whether the photos you took turned out as well as they appeared to on the camera. I’m of the opinion that few things in life are as relaxing as catching a Minor League Baseball game in the evening. I don’t get to do that enough, or maybe I tell myself I can’t do that enough, and that should change.