(Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)Oli Scarff/Getty Images
Daryl Leinweber finally said enough with the angry parents and hostile coaches and the relentless abuse the referees were taking. So he and his fellow Calgary Minor Soccer Association officials got to thinking. Then they got tough.
They came up with a four-point program, one that has stopped a trend that was costing the association 70 per cent of its first-year referees, a crippling blow that was also affecting the number of games the kids could play.
"We still don't have enough refs for the whole system. But yes, [the anti-abuse program]has stemmed the tide," said Leinweber, the CSMA's executive director. "It was the magnitude [of incidents]and the age group that brought it to our attention. The younger group - under 10 - was where they had greater abuse and that was where the referees were 12, 13, 14 years old."
Parents behaving badly has sadly become the norm at countless children's sporting events in a variety of activities, from soccer to baseball to basketball and minor hockey. The latest entry is proving especially distasteful since it involved an irate parent allegedly threatening to pull a gun on a minor soccer referee after a boy's under-13 match in Southern Ontario.
A parent from the North Scarborough Soccer Club Bulldogs, which lost 1-0 to the Aurora Stingers, charged at the assistant referee screaming, "I'm going to end your life" then, according to one witness, motioned to his hip as if he was taking a gun out of a holster. A spokesman for the York Regional Soccer Association confirmed "there was the threat that there was a weapon." Police officers were called in but no charges were filed.
While Leinweber has never had to deal with a perturbed parent possibly packing heat, he has handled multiple incidents of physical threats and verbal darts flung at young officials. The CSMA's four-point rebuttal was to establish: a zero-tolerance policy against abuse; a review committee that could suspend the children for their parents' inappropriate conduct; a referee mentoring program; and a field marshal program, where the parents police themselves.
The result? The CMSA is now keeping 70 per cent of its first-year referees after just two seasons.
"Parents live vicariously through their kids," Leinweber said. "It's the mamma bear, papa bear syndrome coming out and unless someone stepped up, it was going to continue. We stepped in front of the bus."
That the hostile adults' express continues to roll is not so baffling, according to those who follow it. Hockey Canada worked to derail the problem years back with its provocative advertisement campaign, Relax, It's Just A Game. The ads showed children haranguing their parents for not doing off-ice things correctly. Hockey Canada manager Todd Jackson said the ads were so successful they were used by other countries. One of the newer messages is to go easy on the on-ice officials.
"We have to remember the young officials, they're learning, too," Jackson said. "And if we turn them away from the game and don't allow them to learn, we'll lose them. We won't have them at senior levels or in junior hockey."
Sports psychologist Saul Miller has heard tales of athletic abuse and heard, too, from parents wondering what they can do. For starters, Miller acknowledges, "There are a lot of people out there who are not well-balanced and when they get into a situation where their child is involved, it just spills over the top,"
Still, there's always this:
"I've suggested they videotape the coach. They can do the same for a parent," Miller said. "You can pretend to be taping the game and then video tape the unacceptable behaviour. … Some people can get so wrapped up in the game they don't know what they're doing. It's a record of how someone's performing."
The CMSA keeps its share of records. After an incident, a league official will discuss what happened with the referee to prevent it from happening again. The league also notes which teams have had their issues and will assign the right level of official for those games.
"It takes record-keeping and planning," Leinweber said. "We'll also have people - board members and staff - go out and monitor situations. Because of the growth of soccer we have to be very reactionary."
It is not known what York Region minor soccer officials are doing in the wake of the threats made at one of their referees. Sources also said the police called in this past weekend when two parents began fighting at a Kleinburg Nobleton Reds-Vaughan Azzurri match. Ironically, Kleinburg and Vaughan are two of four teams that have refused to play against North Scarborough.
A message left with Cesare Tripodo, the executive director of the YRSA, was not returned Monday.