Parents Seethe On Sidelines of Youth Sports
Md. Girls' Soccer Go Conflict Highlights Growing Problem
By MANUEL ROIG- FRANZIA Washington Post Staff Writer

Any doubts that the specter of menacing parents on the sidelines had hit
girls' soccer were erased that late October afternoon in 1999 when the
Bethesda team traveled to Rockville to playa team from Burke.
In the midst of-a tight game, the referees decided the most vocal
spectator, a loud man in a white jack- et rooting for the Vista Tornado
team from Virginia, had to go. But he wasn't moving. He taunted them
with obscene gestures, then turned his back to the field and dropped his
pants, mooning the referees and everyone else on the field, including
his 14- year-old daughter. .
"One might have expected one or more.. spectators to take some action,"
recalled Bob Emeritz, a Washington Area Girls Soccer League board member
who was watching his daughter play on the Bethesda club, known as the
Bethesda Liverpool team.
Instead, several people stood and applauded. The incident piqued Emeritz
and other spectators, but it wasn't that unusual among youth sports
leagues in the Washington area and across the country, which have become
awash in parental tantrums, threats and outbursts.
The problem has gotten so bad that 15 state legislatures have passed
laws levying stiffer-than-usual penalties against people who attack
referees and other sports officials, although no such measures are in
force in Maryland, Virginia or the District, according to the National
Association of Sports Officials. The association estimates that as many
as 150 officials-referees, umpires, sideline judges-,-are attacked each
year. Leagues are struggling to find referees willing to take the abuse.
Parents Choke, Curse at Youth Sports Officials SOCCER, From
The dilemma has seldom been more apparent in the Washington area than
last week, when the Hot Shots girls soccer team from Crofton was
suspended for the fall season after a 16-year-old referee said hostile
parents followed her into a parking lot after a game, threatening to sue
her. kick her and come to her house. The teenage referee also said
obscenities were scrawled on her father's van.
The referee, whose name is not being released by the league, tearfully
recounted the game at a hearing held by the Washington Area Girls Soccer
League, board members said. An assistant referee gave a similar account.
But they have been rebutted by Crofton's coach, Doug Cahill, who
maintains that no parents followed the referee into the parking lot and
has appealed the suspension to the Maryland State Youth Soccer
Association, which will hold a hearing the week of July 23.
The frequency of assaults on officials and the intensity of parents at
youth sporting events has been stoked, psychologists say, by the
increasing attention given to professional sports as a path to instant
riches and fame.
"They're hoping that by pushing things there will be this ultimate
reward of their children becoming a professional athlete or getting a
college scholarship," said Daniel Wann, a psychology professor at Murray
State University in Kentucky who studies violent sideline behavior. "The
funny thing is that they never bother to ask the kid if that is what
they want."
Flare-ups by spectators happen at a wide variety of sports events, from
little league baseball and hockey to basketball. But in recent years, it
has been particularly noticeable in girls' soccer leagues, where
organizers have seen a marked change in ten- or since the success of the
U.S. women's soccer team and the ascendancy to celebrity of players such
as Mia Hamm.
Some of the recent assaults have been remarkably vicious, such as the
New Mexico parent who smashed an aluminum baseball bat into the face of
a baseball umpire last year, breaking his nose and an eye socket. In
Port St. Lucie, Fla., a .soccer coach was charged with assault in 1999
after head-butting a referee, who needed eight stitches. And there was
even an assault in 1999 at an Oklahoma T-ball game for 5- and
6-year-olds, where a coach choked a 15- year-old umpire.
The attacks have joined the sporting lexicon: "sideline rage."
Increasingly, assaults on referees and other sports officials are
leading to criminal complaints. Washington Area Girls Soccer League
officials said that last year in Prince William County, a parent, whom
they declined to identify, was sentenced to one year of probation for
threatening a
teenage referee.
The persistence of sideline outbursts by parents and coaches befuddles
some league coordinators, who feel almost powerless to stop it.
"We've tried everything we could think of; it doesn't seem to be doing
any good," said Washington Area Girls Soccer League President Kathie
Diapoulis, whose organization has 300 teams in the District, Maryland
and Virginia,
Punitive measures have not served as a deterrent Emeritz says. Problems
abound even though the man who mooned the referee in Bethesda for
instance, was fined $500, and his daughter's team voluntarily barred all
parents from its next three games.
Elsewhere, leagues have tried to curb abuses by forcing parents to Sign
contracts promising to be- have themselves at games. And last year, an
Anne Arundel County Recreation and Parks Department basketball league,
using an approach tried in other parts of the country, experimented with
a "Silent Saturday" game in Crofton, where parents, fans and coaches
were not allowed to cheer, yell or clap.
Yet the sideline abuse continues to such an extent that referees expect
to be berated at almost every game, on almost every call.

Patrick Soleymani, a 17 -year-old from Sterling who has been a soccer
referee for three years, says he has watched as parents threw soda cans
and lawn chairs onto the fields at games. "They cuss at you. ...They
say, 'You foreigners don't know how to play soccer,' " said Soleymani,
whose parents are Iranian. "It hurts."
Emeritz estimates that three-fourths of the league's referees quit
within three years because they're fed up with abusive parents. The
departures have created a referee shortage so pronounced that the league
now offers to pay for certification courses and officiating equipment
for anyone who promises to referee 10 games in a season.
But despite those efforts, the shortage persists and the leagues often
are turning to younger referees. Some referees in the less-competitive
leagues are as young as 12. It is not uncommon for 15- or 16- year-olds
to be pressed into service as center referees-the most demanding
position and the head of the three-person officiating crew-at the more
competitive games for traveling teams such as the Hot Shots. Not long
ago, the center spot was almost always held by an adult.
The 16-year-old referee at the Crofton Hot Shots game had one year of
experience, less than most coordinators want in a center referee, even
though she was a longtime player.
Marc Hild, whose Soccer Club of Baltimore Bays' team opposed the Hot
Shots, said the crowd was vocal throughout the game but really came to
life 10 minutes into the start of the last half when one of his players
collided with Crofton's goalie, Megan Cahill, the daughter of Coach Doug
Cahill.
Hild said Doug Cahill, who declined to be interviewed for this article,
protested loudly and came onto the field, arguing with a Bays'
assistant.
"Quite frankly, I think the coaches incited some of the behavior in the
spectators," Diapoulis said. She said a more experienced referee might
have given Cahill a penalty card or ejected him from the game. "Maybe if
she had done that, there would never have been a problem," she said.
After the game, the referee testified that she walked to the parking lot
with two assistant referees. She could hear men and women yelling at her
as they followed her, she said, but she was too scared to turn around.
"I felt very vulnerable," she said, in a voice that witnesses at the
hearing said shook with emotion. "I have never seen such hostile parents
in all of my soccer life, either as a player, a spectator or as a
referee."
The Crofton coaches listened to the testimony, a league report said, but
they showed no remorse.

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