Power of Caring
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Fighting for kids' lives

Making sports fun again is up to the parents

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Posted: Wednesday June 23, 1999 04:48 PM

WOODSTOCK, Ga. -- The ballfields at the South Cherokee Recreation Association complex are like thousands of others throughout the country. Parents sit on bleachers along the baselines, or on folding chairs in the shade. Little kids play in the dirt not far away.

Young players kick around dusty infields, the air is heavy with the ping of metal bats and the thwack of baseball on leather.

It is Americana, simple and sweet and, seemingly, uncomplicated.

Except ... a few weeks ago, after an otherwise innocent game between 10-year-olds, some parents and coaches got into a fist-swinging, bottle-throwing, name-calling melee. Police were called, the parents had to be separated. Nine adults were later banned from the park for life.

And the players -- 10-year-olds -- watched it all.

Fred Engh calls it an "epidemic" in youth sports, the alarming trend of violence that is destroying sports for millions of youngsters. It is not, obviously, just in the southern part of Cherokee County, some 30 miles or so north of Atlanta. There are horror stories of parents and coaches and umpires getting into it from California to Washington, D.C., beatings and shootings and vicious attacks, stories that make you sick, stories that make you shake your head and wonder whatever happened to that simple piece of Americana you knew as a kid.

"The problem that we have across the country," says Engh, who is the president of the National Alliance for Youth Sports, a non-profit organization based in West Palm Beach, Fla., "is we've lost total perspective of what [sports] should be."

From the e-mailbag Some comments on Replay redux, June 2, 1999. I agree that there is nothing wrong in using replay in assisting umpires to make the CORRECT call. To prevent the problems which have occurred in the NFL about length of time and to prevent its overuse, I propose that replay be used ONLY on the discretion of the umpiring crew. It cannot be used to make out/safe calls or for calling balls/strikes. A manager cannot insist that replay be used and no protest may be filed for not using replay. What do you think? --Ira Saltz I completely disagree with your column. You have the simplistic attitude toward replay that most of the replay fanatics have. You appear to believe that replay is a simple mathematical equation: Officials plus Replay = Officials. You are wrong. The biggest problem with replay is not in its implementation, or that it slows the game down, or that it is not accurate. The biggest problem is that it makes the game officials worse. As a former football referee, I was amazed at how much more tentative the NFL officials became after replay was implemented. In particular, I saw a tremendous hesitancy in blowing a play dead, because if an unseen fumble had occurred, the whistle would end the play and the referee would have to make the dreaded announcement that there was no fumble due to an inadvertent whistle. Also the officials appeared to not want to make tough calls because they did not want to be overruled by replay. This led to officials making no calls and waiting for another official to end the play. While replay might have corrected a few bad calls, the hesitancy of officials to make calls led to an increase in bad calls. -- Rob Nissen I agree that we need to give replay a second chance. There were too many instances last year in football that a corrected call could have changed the outcome of some crucial games like the Jets game or the 49ers and Green Bay game. I say if we can undo a bad call we should use it. -- Tony Mattace But does the replay help every team equally? A blown call between the Packers and the Dolphins on a Monday night game will have a lot more cameras on it then the last game of the season between two teams that failed to make the playoffs. In the baseball game, the umps used the TV replay. Would more cameras be available if it was a Game of the Week? There has to be some system set up so that the available video coverage is the same for every game. Right now, that is just not true. I think one of the problems with the NFL's use of replay was it made the officials too tentative, almost afraid to make a call because it would be overturned. -- Dave Brown I agree with your comments on using replay in all sports, provided that the flow/timing of the game is not interrupted significantly. I am a baseball purist as far as the playing of the sport (rather unique for a 28-year-old fan of an American League team), but I do see the difference between playing the game in the traditional manner and getting the calls correct. I'll trade you the DH for replay any day of the week. -- Steve Koster, Wadsworth, Ohio As if the games aren't long enough already. -- Don Macpherson, Montreal, Quebec

Engh has written a book, "Why Johnny Hates Sports: Why Organized Youth Sports are Failing Our Children and What We Can Do About It," detailing the problems in youth sports today. A former college wrestler who has raised seven sports-playing kids and been a coach, athletic director and educator for more than 30 years, Engh has seen first-hand how parents and coaches and others often can destroy sports for America's youth.

According to one study in Michigan, more than 17 million American children who participate in some kind of youth sports program will drop out by the time they are 13. Many of them quit because these sports programs simply are not fun anymore.

"Sports are the greatest resource, I believe, we have for children in this country. And we're destroying it," says Engh. "We can teach children the lessons of life through sports. The lessons of sports are really the lessons of life.

"We are robbing kids of that opportunity."

Why do kids give up sports? Why are the games of youth simply not fun anymore for so many?

Well, pushy parents are one reason. And pushy coaches. Unfair expectations from both parents and coaches. Administrators that don't know how these programs should be run.

There are more reasons, of course, but it all starts and ends with the people who run the games, who man the concession booths, who sit in the shade on the baselines or pace in the dugout. It all starts with the adults.

And to cure the problem, Engh insists, these adults must recognize the "ugly" parent in us all.

Anyone who has been to a Little League game lately knows what Engh is talking about. The loudmouth in the stands. The overzealous dad who demands more playing time for his son. Somebody yelling "Kill the ump!"

It's hard to figure what's going through parents' minds once their little ones step onto the field. It's a fear that their kid will not be successful in life -- unless he or she is successful on the playing field -- which leads some parents into losing it, according to Engh. It's ego with others: My kid is better than yours.

And, with others still, it is plain greed, a thinking that their son or daughter can be the ticket to fame and fortune and respect and all the things the parents have missed out on in life.

Getting the grownups in line is the first, and the most important, step in makings sports fun again. And, really, before we all forget, that's what sports should be about, especially for the young children.

Fun. Camaraderie. The thrill of making a catch, or hitting a ball. Running the bases. Learning how to win. And, more importantly, how to lose. And to keep trying.

The National Youth Sports Coaches Association has a pledge its members must sign, and one of the entries is a simple one that could serve parents well, too. "I will remember that I am a youth sports coach," it reads, "and that the game is for children and not adults."

Two weeks after the postgame brawl in Cherokee County, the games continue well into the warm Georgia night. The TV crews and newspapers and radio reporters that swarmed the place after the fight all have gone. Normalcy has returned to the SCRA ballparks.

An umpire takes a break after a game and wonders aloud what all the fuss was about in the first place, why the media can't recognize all the good that is going on, why everyone has to concentrate on the negative.

"Every once in a while, something like that happens," he says. "But those things happen. It's like a tornado. It comes and goes."

The difference is, you can't prevent a tornado.

John Donovan is senior writer for CNNSI.com.