Any parent who’s had kids in sports knows how the experience can be ruined by loudmouthed, abusive parents. Any parent who’s had a child participate as a referee or other type of official can doubly vouch for the way some fans suck the fun out of sports, like a vampire.
For some parents, it’s enough to keep their children away from league sports altogether. Which can be a terrible loss, because participating in sports teaches the exact values that bad fans ruin: respect, teamwork, appreciation for rules, goal-setting, achievement through work, learning from losses.
To reduce the damage that some fans have on their game, Hockey Calgary decided that for this season, every parent with a child in the Calgary minor hockey system must take a one-hour online course called Respect In Sports. If you don’t sign off on the course, your kid can’t play, can’t even practice.
The question for today is not to judge the value of the course, designed by ex-NHLer Sheldon Kennedy (himself the victim of an abusive coach) and business partner Wayne McNeil. As of this week, more than 11,000 hockey players in Calgary had at least one parent take the course, although there still remained about 230 registered players who could not come on the ice until the form showing completion of the course had been signed.
It’s hard to imagine a program with that kind of buy-in not producing good results: less abuse of officials, less yelling at kids to “pass the @#$% puck!” or to get their butts in gear.
But for today, let’s look at why Hockey Calgary would feel they needed to make taking such a course a deal-breaker in the first place.
One commentary suggested the rising cost of organized hockey has led to a higher expectation of success in the minds of parents.
For the outlay on skates and equipment, ice time, special hockey schools, plus the time commitment for practices, games and tournaments, the suggestion was that parents expect a payback. That manifests itself in less patience over referee or coaching decisions, and less forbearance when someone else’s kid seems to succeed unfairly.
If that’s true, it would be interesting to see the study showing soccer parents (who pay far less for their kids to play) are so much more civilized on the sidelines. Likely, no such study can be produced.
Instead, it would be better to look at attitudes we find all over the community.
Do you see a decline in the level of respect people show each other in general? Less respect for teachers and peers at school? What can we make of the instances when young people are beaten to death, just for looking at the wrong person the wrong way?
People might argue that it’s a big leap to link teenage swarming with bad behaviour in hockey rinks, but let’s just stick with this a minute.
When today’s parents were youngsters playing a game they loved, did we need to teach parents to behave in public? More, did we need to insist that every parent take a course in proper behaviour? Until cases like Graham James came to light, we certainly didn’t need to worry whether our coaches were predators.
What’s changed seems to be that the lessons the older generation first learned from sports (respect, teamwork, appreciation for rules, goal-setting, achievement through work, learning from losses) haven’t been carried into adulthood in some cases. And that lack is severe enough for Hockey Calgary to fear for the safety of its players to the point that everyone needs a refresher on fair play.
This is a report card that all parents and league managers should watch.
Greg Neiman is an Advocate editor.