More Parent Violence

Man slugs kid’s football coach over playing time — Newsday.com

Upset over how much time his son was getting in a Pop Warner football game, police say a man punched the boy’s coach, knocking him unconscious for about 30 minutes.

Over playing time….

Penalties likely for parents in sports fight in Olympia, Washington

Penalties likely for parents in sports fight – News – The Olympian – Olympia, Washington

Several parents involved in a fight after a youth football game last weekend are likely to face consequences from the Black Hills Junior Football League, its president said Sunday.

Just to note: Later in the article, it is mentioned that the teams include 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders. As somebody who’s never seen a game in this league, it seems to me that that is a pretty wide grouping of ages for a contact sport. Picture an above-average-sized fourth grader and a below-average-sized second grader. Ouch. Not to absolve the parents, but does this sound to anybody else like a perfect recipe for trouble?

Do contact sports lead to off-the-field aggression?

Newswise Social and Behavioral Sciences News | Male Adolescent Athletes More Likely to Be Aggressors

full report: http://www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/Oct07ASRFeature.pdf

“The results suggest that sports fail to protect males from interpersonal violence. Indeed, contact sports are positively associated with male serious fighting.”

Later in the short preview:

…sports programs, including coaches and parents, ultimately need to emphasize self-control and respect

Which begs the logical question: Do the programs studied lead to violent off-field behavior because they are violent sports or because they are violent sports taught in an unhealthy culture that doesn’t emphasize the values above?

Fewer and fewer officials

Visalia Times-Delta | Tulare Advance Register – www.visaliatimesdelta.com -

Ref mix-up sidelines Norfolk’s youth football

Just about anyone who has attended a high school football game has seen some type of discontent about officials, but Lozano said the problems his association has with verbal abuse has nothing to do with an irate high school coach or a chorus of boos bellowing out from the stands after a controversial call.

“It’s youth football,” Lozano said. “The abuse you take at a youth football game is five times worse than a high school game. You try to explain yourself at times, and it just gets worse. … The abuse we take at a youth football game is tough. The people in youth football think they can abuse an official like they see on TV.

It seems that any number of youth sports organizations are having a hard time finding enough officials. More and more pre-high-school-aged events I see are entirely officiated by youth officials not much older than the players.

Bill Walsh – The incredible value of a great coach

Read the article at NFL.com

Click here for more highlights from the memorial service

He did it for players. He made us see higher visions of greatness in ourselves than we had ever seen before. - Jeff Kemp

Bill was blessed with one of the greatest gifts you can have … to see the future potential in another human. - Steve Young

As a coach, I pray to be so lucky as to have a player one day remember me with a comment like the ones above. Be sure to watch Joe Montana’s moving eulogy.

The players’ comments above remind me the root meaning of the word “coach” – a means of conveyance, a vehicle that transports a person from one place to another. Walsh understood that his job was to take players from their current place to the outer limits of their potential. This concept came up over and over again from his players – many of them talked about Coach Walsh’s belief in them exceeding their own belief in themselves.

“All it takes is one bad parent”

The vice: High school coaches feeling added pressure from pushy parents : Football : Knoxville News Sentinel

The sounds of fall: Leaves crunching underfoot, the first football practice of the new season, and parents griping. It must be time to get back to school!

Boys parents sue youth grid coach for $1M

SI.com – More Sports – Boys parents sue youth grid coach for $1M – Saturday May 12, 2007 4:25PM

MASON, Ohio (AP) — A lawsuit filed by the parents of a youth football league player seeks $1 million from a coach they accuse of grabbing the boy by his helmet and jerking him off his feet.

News Times Live Documents detail DAYO case

News Times Live Documents detail DAYO case

But the 13-year-old and a 12-year-old teammate were still too heavy. That’s when Hugh Josh Weyer and Christopher Murphy, assistant coaches with the Danbury Trojans junior midget division team, decided more extreme measures were necessary.

The solution they allegedly came up with, giving both boys “water pills” — over-the-counter diuretics that accelerate fluid loss — to further reduce their weight was at least partly successful in the short run. The 13-year-old lost nine pounds and was able to play in the game.

More details on the case of youth football coaches who gave players diuretics to make weight (a story I mentioned earlier).

Coaches Accused Of Giving Kids Diet Pills

Coaches Accused Of Giving Kids Diet Pills – Local News

I guess it shouldn’t be shocking in light of the “Balco-ification” of pro sports. I know from experience we are seeing the problems with supplements at the high school level. It’s downright frightening, however, to think that this has reached its way down to seven year-olds.

Dungy and Lovie

I know I’m restating what a lot of people have already said, but, hey… it’s my blog!

Watching the postgame interviews with these two gentlemen made me proud to be a coach.

It’s interesting being a coach in the US where our collective vision is of a coach red-faced and yelling. (I’m inclined to be that way myself many days.) It is so refreshing to see the coaching style of these two men really buck that trend. By all accounts, neither is inclined to raise his voice or intimidate players to get results. Each also models the ideal “humble in victory and dignified in defeat.”

Watching their comments after the Superbowl was like a complete textbook on classy coaching wrapped into 5 or ten minutes of video.