Your Role in the Stands

I first read the attached article in the Marysville Advocate over ten years ago.  I realize that it directly relates to baseball, but I think we can all understand that it is universal in the point it tries to make.  Take a moment and follow the link, read the story, and ask yourself what are you modeling for the youth of our community.  Do you want to raise a generation that rises to the challenge, pulls together as a team, and plays with sportsmanship?  I see these as the very reasons we support athletics in schools, there are valuable life lessons to be learned in these activities.  However, if we are not careful, we can also teach athletes to be bad sports, to scapegoat others for failures, and to give up.  It was not my fault, it was poor officiating; It was not my fault, my team mates did not give me the ball; It is never my fault, why should I bother trying.  It is more useful to expend energy addressing what we can do better as a player than it is to waste energy on what others need to do to improve.

The truth is that nobody is perfect.  Even with the advanced technology of super slow motion and ten camera angles, how many NFL and college football replays are still controversial.  And when it is all figured up, the officials on the field at game speed are typically upheld on review.  The truth is that nobody is perfect and officiating is a very difficult job.

Fans at games need to take a step back and realize their environment in order to gauge their behavior in the stands.  Imagine a Frank Martin or Bobby Knight tirade directed at a player who happened to be 7 years old in a youth basketball game.  How would you react as a fan, as a parent?  Those coach's tactics for addressing their players have been questioned for college aged players and would be unacceptable for youth.  The same distinction should be made for fans.  There are different levels of appropriate behavior for a fan at the local level and a fan in a college arena where honestly nobody can hear you past the two rows around you.  There are different levels of appropriate behavior at a youth game than a junior high game and at a junior high game compared to the high school game.  Sometimes we forget that the television cannot hear us but people in the gym cannot help but hear us.

The same consideration needs to be extended to the coaches in our system.  No coach wants to lose.  No coach wants to treat a player unfairly.  They are certainly not perfect, but coaching is also a difficult job.  Yelling at a player to trap, or push the ball up the court may be in direct contradiction to what the coach is telling them in the huddle.  Yelling at the coach to pass during a football game may be great advice from your perspective but it is not productive for the team.  How many times have the crowd demanded a pass in disgust at the play calling only to have a pass play result in an interception and the same crowd question why the ball was ever thrown.  The nice thing about an arm chair quarterback is that none of the bad stats are ever our responsibility so we can always claim to have known better.

The truth is that we are running out of people who are willing to coach and officiate because of the abuse that must be endured.  The High School Activities Association reports an alarming trend as officials approach retirement and younger ones are not entering the profession.  Coaches coach, officials officiate, and fan should cheer.  Please review the attached link for another perspective.  As I was unable to verify the source of the article, I have provided a link that includes that background.

I'm an umpire.