I mentioned there was an altercation at Emma’s soccer game on Saturday. Here’s what happened:
At the end of almost every kids’ sporting event I’ve seen, the kids from each team line up and high-five the kids from the other team. This is designed to be a show of sportsmanship. After high-fiving, the kids run back to the side of the field where their parents and coaches are.
The kids on Emma’s team had barely made it back to their side, when one of the moms on the other team came across the field, dragging her crying daughter behind her. “Who punched my kid?? What kinda team are you running over here?” (The answer that morning, by the way, was a losing team.) A couple of the parents from our side tried calming this lady down to see what the problem was, but she was spun ‘way up. Her kid was crying, then some of the kids on our side were crying, and this lady started lunging at the kids individually, saying “Did you do it?!” (Side note: this would be a good spot for an interrobang.)
The coaches, for some reason, stayed out of it, and the referees said they saw nothing. The other parents were trying to explain that if someone on our team did something, we’ll find out what it was, but her screaming and upsetting the kids wasn’t helping the situation. By the time it was over, we had a bunch of really upset 9- and 10-year olds and nobody knew what really happened.
I’ve seen parents screaming at the refs and their own kids, including “moms on the mat” and a dad who was thrown out of a basketball game when his insults to the ref were called a technical foul against his son’s team, but never have I seen a parent come after the kids on another team. That’s just wrong.
And this in a community that teaches the kids about Character Counts. At least only one parent lost her head.