In case you missed this story out of Massachusetts from a couple of days ago, follow the link below. Apparently a dad bought his son to football practice late. The coach didn’t like the tardiness and ordered the player to run laps as a consequence. Dad didn’t like the fact that his son was punished, saying it was his own fault, not his son’s fault. Apparently the parent and the coach called each other names, went behind a building to settle their differences and then the coach allegedly punched the dad in the face, breaking his eye socket. Charges are pending, according to the news report.

Good Lord. Another classic example of the problems associated with youth sports. Do I have a issue with the coach telling the boy to run some extra laps? Absolutely not. He missed some practice. Seems fair to me as long as it wasn’t excessive. The player probably won’t be late next time and he got some exercise during the process.  Perhaps if the tardiness was truly the father’s fault, Dad should have volunteered to run the laps with his son instead of allegedly instigating a fight with the coach.

Obviously both the coach and the parent are to blame here for the escalated argument and subsequent assault. Clearly is sends an awful message that differences are handled with fists instead of words. How embarrassing! At least the confrontation ended with only relatively minor physical damage. Next summer marks the 10th anniversary of a hockey dad killing another parent right in front of his sons. That also happened in Massachusetts. Will we ever learn from these incidents?  

http://multimedia.wbz.com/m/video/26971147/wilmington-dad-hurt-in-fight-with-football-coach.htm

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 at 10:52 pm and is filed under Officiating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.