Lowering intensity level would help
Going to Sunday afternoon football games to watch scrawny 9-year-old boys chase each other around can give you a headache. It’s not the cold afternoon November air, the frozen metal benches or the lack of entertainment on the field. What’s not to like about little kids wearing huge helmets in football uniforms which seem to highlight their bare chicken legs?
If you haven’t been to one of these pre-high school football games, you may not be aware of the intensity, the hard-hitting, the emotion-charged atmosphere, and the fierce competition – among the parents, not on the field where the little guys are playing.
Sitting directly in front of a screaming parent can give you a giant-size headache. It’s not just the fathers who yell instructions to their sons as they play. It’s the moms, screaming their lungs out.
“You better be hitting someone next time,” one mother shouted to her pint-sized son on the field below. Shout is not an adequate word. An armor-piercing scream is better. Not just once. Several times. Over and over.
And it’s not just one mom or a couple of dads. There were moments when the stands resembled the Roman Coliseum. Gladiators probably had it easier than these kids.
How much pressure should a 9-year-old boy be subjected to? Most of the parents seemed to take the game in stride, except when one of the small fry happened to make a run for the goal line. During those rare moments, a Super Bowl crowd couldn’t match these parents in intensity.
We usually take along a video camera to record our grandson’s athletic adventures. During one moment of mayhem in the stands, as some of the frenzied moms screamed at their sons on the field, I half-seriously considered swinging the camera around to videotape the parents.
Do these people realize what they are doing? Or, how their behavior might appear to others? Or, do they care? Would they be embarrassed if they were caught on videotape that was shown at their home later on?
Fortunately for the little kids, loaded down with padded helmets, on the field I don’t think most of them could actually even hear what their parents were shouting to them from the stands. But there’s no doubt that if you are sitting in the stands directly in front of them you will hear every shattering syllable.
If you had enough nerve to offer a word of advice to one of the screamers, you might calmly say: “Lady, it’s just a kids’ game. There’s no million-dollar contract. No Super Bowl ring. No cash prize. Only a plastic trophy.”
It makes you wonder if down through the years some parents have always reacted this way when their kids compete in sports. I don’t really recall parents being so intense when our children were in school sports several years back. But maybe I just wasn’t paying attention to anyone else back then anyway.
After the game, the youngsters seemed to take it all in stride. They won. They lost. They did their best. I didn’t see any of the pint-size players kicking helmets or trash-talking about the referees. In other words, their behavior was much better than some of the parents.
Maybe it’s true that some parents will attempt to relive their childhoods through their kids. They want them to be the athletic stars they never were. Could this be the motivation behind the screaming and the emotional intensity?
Two words of advice. Chill out. It’s a game. These are just little kids. We should never forget that.
Mike Ellis is the editor of the Herald-Standard. His e-mail address is: mellis@heraldstandard.com.