Youth Sports (i.e. the thing we all loved which parents have now ruined)

I can never imagine a situation where you feel you need to physically attack an official. My baseball son can get caught up on calls (as a pitcher and hitter) and I am constantly like just move on to the next. Or I use it as a chance to help him learn some situational stuff. Like, OK, he called a strike there and now you are behind in the count, how do you adjust?

Last weekend his team was losing a game to a team they were much better than. It was kind of a weird disappointment, but just was like, why are they playing like this and then, they are 10 so who really cares in the overall picture? With competitive people who want to see their kids succeed, it is tough not putting too much weight on it and we've discussed that a lot here, when in the end it is fun and it is for the kids. But hitting an umpire because of it? Look at those kids standing there after he did that, both teams. What was going through their heads?

I can chirp some, but really do try and hold back. I think some of it is from previous coaching. Never really yell, just make comments that I probably should control too (you surely hate me as well!). In a different game the umpire, a probably 17ish kid, made a call that one of our players' bat got hit by a pitch when he got seriously clocked in the forearm. It seemed heavily influenced by parents on the other team. I said, don't let parents make the call -- I know, I know, kind of calling the kettle black there -- and the look he gave me. I shut up the rest of the tourney.

To our coach's credit, I have never once seen him even come close to raising his voice to an umpire.

 

One thing that is crazy about Little League is they still play at the same dimensions my 10-year-old plays at now. Some of those kids are going into high school! We played on fields this past weekend with fences that were just a little shorter than those at Williamsport and we saw more than a handful of home runs. These players are 10. It is so weird to watch the bigger kids play on those fields. They can't lead off and steal and stuff, so that evens it out some, but any more by the time you are 13 you are basically playing on a regulation field outside of Little League.

But baseball is getting watered down a ton. There are so many travel teams now and just not enough players that are good enough to field them all. It hurts all levels. There is nothing wrong with rec. I know of several players that have played high school baseball in this day and age who did nothing more than rec. Got to have those bigger opportunities! And I say this as a parent who is really loving tournament baseball so I am a hypocrite. If my kid couldn't play at this level, though, we wouldn't be trying. I don't know who is to blame, travel organizations or leagues that couldn't figure it out. Probably a mixture.

 

We've got Little League and Parks and Rec leagues competing for basically the same pool of players, and then all the stars are off playing travel ball.

So you get LL and P&R playing with five-team leagues.

 

I really, really try to stress focusing on the things you can control, because I think its an important lesson in life.

Bad calls. Bad bounces. A wet ball. The sun. None of those are things you can change, so there is no sense in spending one ounce of energy worrying about them.

 

I was a chirper a long while back and then my buddy who was a hoops ref told me "refs aren't perfect, they're just trying to do their job same as the players, are players perfect?" Plus, I started refereeing hoops with him at our club league and I realized you just don't have time to make a biased call. Its bang bang. (Now Donaghy (and point shavers) showed that yes you could have a bias but you've got to really work to implement that plan.)

Having gone through youth sports now with my two boys, its awful thinking about the stuff I saw from parents. Looking back now, there's not one Div 1 standout, let alone someone going pro. Yet, those parents thought they were on the bullet train there. (One of my buddies' kids is/was a highly recruited PG who had a pick from any Top 10 program this year and chose a local program; but he's the lone exception and a fantastic kid I used to post up when he was 8 )

 

That idea should be tattooed on the brain of every sports fan. It is not easy to make biased calls as a sports official. It would have to be at the front of your mind at all times.

Hold onto that idea, and also this idea -- how often do you recall a call being changed because of fan protests? So it's a fruitless exercise.

 

I have more than once heard refs/umps/officials didn't wake up that morning thinking they were going to ruin your day. It is still good to put it all in perspective, too, about how much importance this moment in time has on the rest of anything. Probably pretty low.

Another fun one from this past weekend, a team was batting and hit a home run (most of our fields do not have fences that the kids can hit one over). I guess in the celebration the kid did not touch the plate or was close enough that an appeal happened. The ump called him out. I'm all for learning experiences, but when you don't get over-the-fence home runs very often, you better be damn sure of that call because that does suck for the kid. Honestly, I'm guessing the ump was right, but that is tough. Then just moments later there was a close play at first and the runner and first baseman smashed into each other right as the ball got there, runner going right down the line, first baseman going for the ball. Runner is on the ground practically knocked out, defensive team gets the ball and tags him and the ump called him out. Pretty sure it was the right call.

Well, that team and its supporters went crazy with the combination of the two. The first base coach was kicked out pretty much immediately and a parent was just unhinged. He should have been tossed. The tourney direct came over to calm him down and he thought she was a parent from the other team and that was fun. Use your imagination. He definitely should have been kicked out then, but she defused it.

The both umps on the field handled it all well and kept their composure. Fun times with that one.

 

Exactly. I say that all the time: "Literally no one has ever argued so persuasively as to get a ref to change their call."

Understanding external vs. internal locus of control is so important. An external locus of control turns into, "well we would have won if the ref had just made the right calls," when the focus needs to be, "how well did I execute my job on that play and all the other plays?"

 

I filled in as a hoops ref this year in our town hoops when they had Covid issues. First game was 4th grade boys and one of the big kids was being over the top physical. After calling him for maybe his 6th foul in the first half, at halftime, I spoke to him and his coach that he needs to calm it down. I even demonstrated that how he needed to play defense with his feet and that he needed to go straight up when he tried to contest a shot. His father lost it on me, saying that I just didn’t like his son because his older kid didn’t like playing for me like 5 years back. I tried to calmly explain that I didn’t even know that they were related and I was trying to make the game fun for everyone. Next game comes and the father waits around and tells parents that he knows to watch out for me because I’m a terrible ref. I threw him out and decided life is too short for that kind of agita.

 

You know it’s bad when the NYT weighs in …


https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/21/sports/referee-shortage-youth-sports.html

 

My daughter is starting her second year of lacrosse, instructional league. The refs are all HS seniors who are working toward their certification. There was a big emphasis during a recent clinic about respecting the refs, as they're the players that the current players will look up to.