When Youth Cause the Violence during a Youth Sporting Event

I usually write about how adults act when it comes to youth sports; however, I recently came across an article entitled “13-year-old” basketball player stomps on opponent’s head during Bay Area game” so of course my interest was piqued and I read the article. The article written by J.R Stone on July 24, 2024, reports that a young 13-year-old basketball player was seen on video stomping on an opposing player's head.  Mr. Stone states that "he (the young man) was down on the floor and this kid just came and just stomped on him and on his head."  Eva and Roderick Guingab's son was playing on the Tumakbo United team, which is a Filipino-American youth team based in the Bay Area, with players from across the U.S.  The Guingab’s stated there was a scuffle to get possession of the ball, then another player reacts.  "You could clearly see the size of his shoe on his face. My son suffered a concussion for the first time he played basketball," said Ms. Guingab.  Of course, the family of the child who did the stomping states that their son did what he did because he was standing up for a teammate who he believed had just been kicked and punched in the melee.  The video attached to article clearly shows the boy who was supposedly the “victim” of being “kicked and punched” was clearly the aggressor to begin with so, in my opinion the child who did the stomping was clearly in the wrong.

In researching this subject, I surprisingly did not find many articles in which the child(ren) were involved with causing the violence. Most, if not all the articles that I found related to adults or coaches engaged in the violence at youth sporting events.  The one article that I did find that discussed the subject at all was written by Darren Cooper of NorthJersey.com published on February 13, 2024, entitled “Why is there so much animosity in the crowd at HS sports events? We asked a psychologist” in this article Mr. Cooper states with kids being empowered at younger ages, they no longer seem to be respecting authority figures, which is leading to issues in youth sports at all level.  Mr. Cooper interviewed Dr. Edward Callaghan, the founder and director of child services at the Integrative Institute of New Jersey. He has been dealing with parental/child issues for 25 years and he is "alarmed" by this rising trend of violence at youth and high school sporting events.

Mr. Cooper stated that Dr. Callaghan “asked lots of young people about their perceptions of the various authority figures in their lives, "Callaghan said "many of them have told me outright that adults don’t ‘automatically’ deserve to be respected because of their positions of authority.”  Dr. Callaghan goes on further to state that " young people tend to scrutinize the demeanor of the adults and consistently show respect only to authority figures who demonstrate respect towards them, and who demonstrate a high degree of professionalism in their positions, and who treat others in a fair and unbiased manner.”  While I tend to agree with the children that adults should not get respect just because they are adults, this attitude could lead to issues when coaches are trying to coach children in the youth sports arena and if the child(ren)’s parents are to ones who are passing the attitude of “not respecting” an adult/coach to the child this could lead to a child not listening to or taking coaching and further lead to the incident that is referenced above.

Now while I was not at the event in question and just saw a small snippet of what happened throughout the game, the video clearly does not show the child who was stomped during the game doing anything short of chasing down a loose ball and in fact, shows the child who was supposedly being “kicked and punched” during the game actually being the aggressor and pulling at the opposing child’s uniform shirt causing the child to fall to the ground.  While the article does not go into what the child’s relationship with the coach was in terms of how he behaved in practice and games, there may/must have been red flags that could have led the coach to handle this child in a different manner and possibly have gotten the child the help that he needed.  The article does state that the child is currently “seeking help to control his emotions and he is not playing with the program at this time.” And they (the team) go on further to state “the behavior that was exhibited by our player is not acceptable and is being taken seriously.”  While this is all good, it might be just a “too little, too late.”  

When I was coaching, I dealt with a few situations where children had problems controlling their emotions leading to problems on the field and while nothing ever reached the level of what happened in the article referenced above, were a few times that it was heading in that direction and in my role as the coach I had to discuss the issue with the parents in order to handle the problem before it became a bigger issue.  In earlier blogs I have stated that youth sports coaches, especially at the recreation level, do not always have the ability or skills necessary to handle children with the emotional/behavioral issues that so many children have today and in their zeal to win they may overlook many problems, especially if it may be an emotional/behavioral problem that they are unable to handle or deal with.  While I cannot say that I have a solution to this problem, I think leagues around the country need to look into this important issue because the child who did the stomping now has the police investigating the incident and while the charges may be minor (or may not be brought at all) and he may only get a slap on the wrist he could be headed to bigger problems down the road.