Todd is the CHB of Montreal anglo print media, but he is 100% dead on with this about parents
Jack Todd: Your kids in minor sports? Here are some rules
It wasn’t a video clip you would want to show on Mother’s Day: I happened to be at the arena, so I lingered to watch a friend’s son play in a lower-level minor hockey game with nine- and 10-year-olds out for a little fun, exercise and team bonding on a weekend morning.
The teams were badly matched. The locals were smaller and slower. The visitors scored early and often — and each time they did, a group of six or eight mothers blasted the deafening air horns they all carried.
The local boys hung their heads after every goal. With those air horns blasting, it looked as though they wanted nothing more than to dig a hole in the ice and disappear.
I don’t recall the final score. It was something like 12-3, or 10-2, or 8-1. It hardly matters. What matters is that at the end of the game, with the teams heading off, the mothers with the air horns lined up along the glass.
The mothers got up as close to the glass as they could — and blasted the air horns in the faces of the boys on the losing team as they filed off the ice.
It was as egregious an instance of poor sportsmanship as I have ever seen — and I’ve seen plenty. Heck, I’ve even been responsible for a few — I’m not exonerating myself. When you have children playing sometimes violent contact sports, you get emotional.
But mothers lining up to blast the losing team with air horns? That’s a whole new level of appalling behaviour. I’ve mentioned this incident before, but it came back to me last week when I stumbled on a clip of University of South Carolina basketball coach Frank Martin talking about sports and parents.
Jack Todd: Your kids in minor sports? Here are some rules
It wasn’t a video clip you would want to show on Mother’s Day: I happened to be at the arena, so I lingered to watch a friend’s son play in a lower-level minor hockey game with nine- and 10-year-olds out for a little fun, exercise and team bonding on a weekend morning.
The teams were badly matched. The locals were smaller and slower. The visitors scored early and often — and each time they did, a group of six or eight mothers blasted the deafening air horns they all carried.
The local boys hung their heads after every goal. With those air horns blasting, it looked as though they wanted nothing more than to dig a hole in the ice and disappear.
I don’t recall the final score. It was something like 12-3, or 10-2, or 8-1. It hardly matters. What matters is that at the end of the game, with the teams heading off, the mothers with the air horns lined up along the glass.
The mothers got up as close to the glass as they could — and blasted the air horns in the faces of the boys on the losing team as they filed off the ice.
It was as egregious an instance of poor sportsmanship as I have ever seen — and I’ve seen plenty. Heck, I’ve even been responsible for a few — I’m not exonerating myself. When you have children playing sometimes violent contact sports, you get emotional.
But mothers lining up to blast the losing team with air horns? That’s a whole new level of appalling behaviour. I’ve mentioned this incident before, but it came back to me last week when I stumbled on a clip of University of South Carolina basketball coach Frank Martin talking about sports and parents.