One afternoon over winter vacation, I was sitting in my grandmother’s living room in Taylor, Texas flipping channels on her television. Just as I thought to myself that nothing was worth watching on Central Texas Cable at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, I flipped to Comedy Central and found a reason to stay firmly planted in my grandmother’s lazy chair staring at the screen in front of me.
The network was running an old Saturday Night Live episode from a few years back in which Tracy Morgan and Tim Meadows were playfully making fun of the relationship between Tiger Woods and his father, Earl.
The skit, which parodied the A & E show Biography went something like this:
“Tiger always loved golf from a young age. Ever since he could hold a golf club in his two little hands, he would be out there on the links all the diddly-long day working on his game,” Morgan, as Earl, said emphatically.
“My dad used to super glue my hands to my clubs and force me to play golf from sun up to sun down. He was really persistent like that,” Meadows, as Tiger, reflected.
“I was always very proud of Tiger, but I think I was most proud when I watched as he made his final putt at the Masters to win it for the first time,” Morgan said.
“Yeah, that was a special day when I won the Masters. I remember it really well. I remember everything being really quiet as I was making my last putt on the 18th green, and then all of a sudden I heard my dad yelling from the gallery, ‘Ka-Ching! Ka-Ching!’ It was pretty embarrassing,” Meadows said with a nervous grin.
I couldn’t stop laughing. At the time the idea of Earl Woods going to ridiculous ends to make his son into a top-ranked professional golfer and gleefully celebrating as Tiger began pulling in the big bucks was hilarious. Of course, it was just a laughable caricature of Earl Woods, and there is no reason to believe that he ever really put unreasonable pressure on Tiger to succeed and to make millions of dollars playing golf.
But recent events in the media have made me think more seriously about undesirable kinds of parental involvement in their children’s athletics. Just a couple of days after laughing out loud at that SNL skit, I heard the news that a hockey dad had received a six- to ten-year prison sentence for beating another hockey dad to death at a game in which their 10-year old sons were playing. An argument had started between the two men over the game and it quickly turned fatal.
Clearly, the trial of Thomas Junta is somewhat exceptional and it captured the national spotlight precisely because the event was so uncommon and highly disturbing. And yet, it should raise a few concerns about the role of parents in their kids’ sports.
For example, it seems as if more and more parents are becoming too emotionally involved in whether their kids win or lose games. It seems as if they are putting too much emphasis on making their children into stellar college and professional athletes.
First, let me say that I think that the vast majority of parents do a good job of encouraging their kids to achieve in sports without becoming overly invested or even violent in the process. I believe that most parents know how to motivate their children to do their best on the playing field in a constructive way. In the event of win or loss, they are content to see their kids put forth some effort.
Even so, there are some parents out there who are going to violent extremes to push their kids to excel athletically. They are showing very poor behavior when they feel their kids have been denied fair treatment by coaches, officials, and other players.
Around the time that the Thomas Junta verdict was handed down in Massachusetts, I heard another story that a bench-clearing brawl had erupted at a little league baseball game in Florida resulting in several arrests. Two fathers from opposing teams had exchanged heated words over a call made by an official, which turned into shoving and then swinging. Within seconds, the rest of the fathers in attendance had rushed the field and joined in the fight rather than restraining the two men who had started the altercation.
Is this kind of violent behavior by parents at youth sporting events becoming commonplace? I don’t think so. But, it seems to be happening more frequently than ever before. Maybe it has to do with the increasing amount of violence in college and professional sports and the unsportsmanlike conduct that players and coaches exhibit at those levels of play. Or maybe it is more societal.
But whatever accounts for the bad behavior of parents in youth sports, it can’t leave a good impression on the kids who are learning that verbal or physical violence is acceptable and even “part of the game.”
