Weplay Moms

More children than ever are playing youth sports. The National Council of Youth Sports estimates that about 41 million girls and boys play on organized teams, a number that has steadily increased the past 20 years. In soccer, a sport with a historically sharp growth curve, participation among players 6 years of age and older shot up from 15.3 million in 1987 to more than 18 million in 1998 (before dipping in the last decade), according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. In Pop Warner Football, participation has doubled in the last 15 years to 260,000 players, according to league statistics.

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Yet increasingly, these youth football, soccer and field hockey players aren’t enjoying themselves. That’s what kids tell us when we ask, which is not often enough. In 2006, The Minnesota Youth Soccer Association asked youth players what they had observed about their parents, their coaches and about adults generally at their sports games. This is part of what they shared: 34 percent said they had been yelled at or teased by a fan; 15 percent reported that their parents get angry when they play poorly. Sports Illustrated for Kids asked similar questions of its young readers. The feedback was even more disturbing: 74 per cent of children said they had witnessed out-of-control adults at their games. The most common “bad behavior” cited: parents yelling at officials and coaches and parents yelling at children.

Overly invested parents have become a part of the game to be overcome, like zone defenses and shoelaces that won’t stay tied.

“One or two parents from every team want to coach their kids. They’re always trying to tell them: “Hey, keep your eye on the ball.” Parents should be cheerleaders for their son or daughter. Coaches should be in control,” says Michael Lerner, baseball coach at Hammond High School in Columbia, Maryland.

Allison Peterson, who coached her daughter’s youth soccer team in Pomfret, Connecticut, told me a memorable story. A coach of many years, she explained that when she started out she had been unprepared for one of her biggest challenge: counseling 8-year-olds how to stay focused as their parents yelled instructions and criticisms from the sidelines. “It was often difficult for them to concentrate on the game. The girls frequently verbalized that to me,” Peterson says. Peterson and her fellow coaches eventually hit on one strategy; playing kids with the noisiest parents on the side of the field opposite from where their parents stood.

Joey Fuller, a youth soccer coach in Burke, Virginia, shared a similar experience about his daughters, ages 7 and 9. He had volunteered to help supervise their teams in an athletic club in a Washington, D.C. suburb, one that he said attracted parents mostly content to leave the coaching to the coaches. There were overwrought parents, though. He recalled a situation in which a child dribbling downfield picked up the voices of her parents screaming from the sidelines. With players, coaches and other parents watching, “She stopped mid-game, turned around and a made a face. She was clearly upset,” says Fuller. He has witnessed similar situations that attracted less attention.

“At halftime, I saw a girl actually ask her parents to please stop yelling because she plays much better when they don’t yell,” Fuller says. He sighs. “If you’re a kid, why would you want these adults on the sidelines screaming and yelling at you?”

It’s a strange role reversal that must be as awkward for children as for the adults they are preaching to. But desperate times call for desperate measures. In Mahwah, New Jersey, 12-year-old teammates Kiersten Spencer and Kirsten Stuart decided that the adults attending their games ostensibly to root them on were, in fact, driving them nuts. Their behavior was atrocious. Several had resorted to all manner of poor sportsmanship to unnerve players on visiting teams. Fed up, Spencer and Stuart penned a letter to the op-ed editor of their local daily newspaper, The Record.

In their letter, the girls stated the case for adult restraint and self-reflection as well as any researcher or sportswriter could. “Parents are a major problem. They think winning is everything. Once when we played a basketball game...a player from the other team took a foul shot. [O]ne of the parents “accidentally” sneezed right before the player shot, to blow off her confidence as well as her focus. How could he do that to a 12-year-old girl?”

Most parents have far better manners. They’re committed to the idea that kids’ sports are about the simple things: learning sportsmanship, picking up sport skills, and having fun. When youth sports are just about winning, it’s time for moms and dads to ask a tough question: Where did we go wrong?