Columnist Dean Juipe: New trend bans parents from cheering

Dean Juipe

Friday, July 20, 2001 | 11:14 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Secondhand, it sounded exactly like the type of anecdotal evidence I needed to round out a column on the trappings of parents who are overly involved in their kids' games.

It was a verbal report of two grown men who just this week in Las Vegas decided to step outside their sons' youth hockey game to settle a dispute. A fight ensued.

But closer study Thursday led to the realization that the men were scuffling not because of what was going on in the hockey game or because one of the boys clubbed the other with his stick, but as part of a long-running rivalry between the men that may have had any number of tangents.

The fact that their boys were on opposite sides in a hockey game was inconsequential and maybe irrelevant. Case closed.

Yet that doesn't change the greater reality, which was recently addressed in a television program that focused on overbearing and argumentive parents who became combative at youth sporting events.

The solution, provocative that it is, is being tried in assorted communities throughout the country and it has one bottom line: Parents can attend their kids' games but they can't make a sound.

No cheering.

No applause.

No nothing.

It's a novel approach and one that may have some merit in that it allows parents to continue to have a presence at their children's games without allowing them to become a distraction.

Given the way some parents conduct themselves at their kids' games, this code of silence could become an increasingly popular trend. And maybe a good one.

But implementing it takes a strong league hierarchy and one that can insist on policing the no-noise ban. In its test uses, usually at boys and girls soccer games, parents must sign a pledge in which they agree to sit quietly while the games are being played.

At the very least, the no-noise provision results in the parents having a heightened awareness of a situation that is tranquil on the surface yet one that all too often has become ridiculously volatile. Reports of fathers slugging umpires, fathers assaulting other fathers, and mothers strangling other mothers periodically surface with the backdrop of a youth sporting event.

It's really nothing new, and I even recall my own mother keeping a wary eye on another woman who just happened to be the overly vocal mother of a rival 12-year-old pitcher in Little League. But they never came to blows.

Some do.

Go to any kids' game here in the valley this weekend and there's a chance you'll hear or see something untoward. Many times the target of a given parent's wrath is a well-meaning official who doesn't deserve this type of abuse and who is not paid anywhere near enough to be willing to accept it.

Taking the freedom of expression away from the grown-ups may seem drastic on initial reflection while proving to be beneficial to everyone involved in the long run. After all, usually in these cases the kids just want to play but it's the adults who are causing a commotion.

Asking them to sit quietly only mirrors something any parent might tell his or her child each and every day: "Act your age."

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