Violence Against Youth Sports Officials

On January 16th I wrote one of my first blogs posts about the treatment of youth sports officials and last week I touched on an incident that occurred in New Jersey where a youth sports coach attacked and broke the jaw of an umpire at a United States Association Baseball League game. This story has gone from a local story to a national one and I feel the need to comment on this subject yet again.

In last weeks blog I mentioned a story where a youth baseball coach attacked and broke the jaw of an umpire following his ejection from a game, and while that incident is bad enough, some parents were heard yelling “you deserved it” to the umpire while the EMT’s were assisting him after the attack. In my opinion, this is as bad and/or more disgusting than the initial attack. These parents, who are supposed to be role models for their children, were actually yelling at the umpire while he was being treated after the attack which begs the question, do they act this way with other authority figures in their children’s lives or do they just act this way at their children’s youth sporting events? In my opinion, if this behavior continues at youth sporting events, we have a major problem in this country. I am happy to say that as of this writing, the coach (whose name I will not mention) has been arrested and charged with third-degree aggravated assault and fourth-degree assault against the umpire. According to the article on NJ.com, the apparent reason for this attack stems from the umpire throwing the coach out of the game for using foul language and following the ejection, the coach attacked and injured the umpire.

In New Jersey, State Senator Richard Cody (a former youth basketball coach) has introduced a bill in the state legislature that would upgrade certain types of assault against sports officials and Assemblywoman Vicky Flynn is planning additional legislation that would strengthen penalties for assaulting a youth sports officials and adding charges for spectators found to be verbally tormenting referees. What a sad state for our youth sports programs that legislation has to be put in place to protect game officials from coaches and parents at youth sporting events where kids just want to have fun.

The fact that New Jersey is looking to strengthen laws already on the books to protect game officials made me wonder how many states have passed similar laws. According to the National Association of Sports Officials website, 22 states have “legislation specifically defining assaults on sports officials as crimes or other legislation that protects sports officials” meaning that nearly 50% of the states have found it necessary to enact legislation to protect game officials from violence. Statically, 80% of game officials drop out of officiating games after three years (this is according to the National Association of Sports Officials). Could it be that they don’t want to put up with the abuse associated with officiating youth sporting events? The sad part of this is that it is most likely a small percentage of coaches and parents who are causing the majority of the problems that are leading to game officials to quit. According to a January 16, 2019 Cincinnati Inquirer opinion piece by Karen Niehoff and Jerry Anodgrass, the ripple effect of game officials leaving the game in droves is that there are more game officials over 60 years old than under 30 years old and if the older, more experience game officials continue to leave the games that they officiate, there won’t be enough younger officials to replace them. They further state that if there are no game officials then there are no games, and this is currently happening all over the country and it is only getting worse.

While I might be beating this subject to death, I feel that this is a microcosm of what is happening in the world today and that is…everyone’s sense of entitlement. Parents feel that because they are paying money (and in some cases, big bucks) for their child to play travel/elite/select sports that they are entitled to abuse game officials, and the coaches, who are feeling the pressure to “win”, will attack game officials because those same parents are paying big bucks for their child to be on a “winning” team and a “winning team” means more money for the coach/organization. I am not naïve enough to think that if you eliminate the travel/elite/select teams you will eliminate the problem of violence against youth sport officials because whenever you have a competition where score is kept, you will have coaches and parents who will do ANYTHING to win. In my mind the question becomes, what can be done to minimize the violence from occurring in the first place, and this is a question that I hope to examine in the coming weeks.