The parents of a 13-year-old girls travel soccer team in Maryland were recently forced to watch their children play from a distance of 100 yards as punishment for an incident that occurred last season.
According to local media outlets, a referee was berated by parents last fall for making what they felt were incorrect calls. The official, who was a volunteer father, was apparently harassed by a group of parents who are also accused of berating the official’s daughter.
The soccer league, home to many of the area's best soccer players with 600 teams and more than 15,000 participants, has a strict disciplinary system, in which players and coaches receive yellow or red cards for rough or unsportsmanlike conduct. Some have to explain themselves at disciplinary hearings. There are also sportsmanship liaisons on each team, who are supposed to keep fellow parents in check.
Aggressive or otherwise inappropriate behavior by individual parents at soccer games or other youth sporting events happens with regularity these days. But this case was unusual because the whole team's parents were punished.
Kathie Diapoulis, league president, told the Washington Post that the parents had gone too far. The league's disciplinary board has had better luck barring individual parents from attending games in the past three years rather than fining them, because the parents would pay the money and continue the bad behavior.
"We have taken a strong stance," Diapoulis said. "It's important. This isn't the World Cup. . . . And for the parents to be shrieking on the sidelines and belittling people goes against everything we're trying to do. . . . It's not acceptable behavior."
At a recent game a referee was assigned to make sure the parents did not come within 100 yards of the field. Managers were equipped with emergency cellphone numbers in case of another altercation.
The trouble began when a parent from one team, working as an assistant referee, raised a flag in the air and called an offside violation on a player from the opposing team, according to the minutes of the disciplinary hearing. After the game, a parent approached the referee and accused him of making the wrong call, the report says. The parent "started to raise his voice," according to the report. More sniping occurred, and "the tone and behavior of the parents was aggressive." Then another parent allegedly yelled at the referee's daughter, "Your father should be fired!"
The league's disciplinary committee ruled that the parents had violated the league's code of conduct, which asks parents to refrain from questioning referees' calls -- through "egregious" behavior that "has no place in youth sports." They ruled that the parents could not be on the sidelines for the first two games of this season.
