Before the COVID-19 pandemic, I attended forty or so High School basketball games a year – both boys’ and girls’ games. In the process of doing so, I shot thousands of photographs. I have attended games at every school in the Buckeye Border Conference, the Green Meadows Conference, and games at schools affiliated with the Northwest Ohio Athletic League, Western Buckeye League, and the Three Rivers Athletic Conference. (I also attend numerous tournament games.) I could spend the next hour or two critiquing the various facilities, including how suited they are for photography. I have watched dozens of officials work these games. Some of them are consummate pros skilled at their craft. Others, not so much. Some officials have rabbit ears, reacting negatively to coach or fan criticism. Other officials are stone-cold killers, indifferent to critics in the stands. I guess what I am saying is this: I know a fair bit about Northwest Ohio basketball.
Coaches
High school basketball coaches come in all shapes, sizes, and forms. Some of them are teachers of the game, patient with their players, and rarely raise their voices. Others are Bobby Knight-like screaming psychopaths. These screamers constantly berate their players and officials. On more than a few occasions, I’ve watched verbally assaulted players stop listening to their coaches. I am surprised that school boards think it is still okay to employ coaches who treat players this way. I can’t think of a thing such behavior accomplishes that couldn’t be accomplished with a lower voice raised from time to time as needed. The best coaches in the area are men and women who know how to motivate their players to play better and harder, all without psychologically brutalizing them. These screamers are throwbacks to the days when I played basketball. I have been screamed and hollered at more times than I can count, often deservedly so. That said, I had far greater respect for coaches who were passionately firm, men who kept their emotions in control, even when the play on the court was dismal.
Officials
I was taught that you never allow a game to get to the place where the officials determine the outcome. Officials are going to miss calls. They are human, and will, at times, have a bad night. Smart players discern how the officiating crew is calling the game. Sometimes, officials let players play, rarely calling fouls. Others call everything, even nit-picky fouls. My coaches frequently reminded me that “if it looks like a foul, it is a foul.” Players have to play smart. In doing so, they keep the officials from being the deciding factor.
Some coaches allow their players to question or talk back to officials. In my playing days, such behavior would have gotten you a technical foul and a quick trip to the bench. Several years ago, I attended a boys’ game where one of the players screamed at one of the officials, when are you going to call a fucking foul? The young man rightly received a technical foul and his coach took him out of the game for a couple of minutes. He should have been tossed out of the game and suspended for the next game. Should the official have called a foul? Maybe. It doesn’t matter. Respect for officials and opponents is a crucial part of the learning experience; a fact often forgotten is that high school sports are meant to teach teenagers life lessons. When coaches, fans, and parents are screaming at the officials, is it surprising that players think it is okay to do the same?
Fans and Parents
in 2020, I attended girls’ basketball games (both the JV and Varsity games) where a man and his wife spent the entire night berating and badgering the officials. These fans were able to see from 90 feet away that the official standing two feet away was making the wrong call. Traveling was their favorite complaint — all directed at the opposing team, of course. (The opposing team won both games, with the varsity team winning by 40.) During the JV game, the clock hadn’t ticked off 30 seconds before the home team coach was screaming at the officials for “missing” a foul. She was so abusive that one official went to her and said, I’ve heard enough. Sit.
One thing I have noticed over the years is that screaming coaches beget screaming fans. Fans smell blood in the water and go after the officials. Did the officials miss some calls during the aforementioned game? Sure, but they were hardly the reason the home team received a forty-point beat-down. Lazy defense and poor shooting, and not the officials, cost the hometown girls the game. As the game got into the fourth quarter, local fans started grousing about the visiting team’s players. They seemed to think that the opposing team should have stopped playing hard. One girl shot a successful three-pointer and one fan said the girl lacked class. Don’t want the girl to make the shot? Try playing defense. Play harder, play better, realizing that on some nights you are just going to get your ass whipped. (This is the same school where fans several years ago ridiculed an opposing player for being fat. Talk about class.)
Fans think their $6-$8 ticket gives them the right to be an asshole, and to some degree they are right. I wish they would, however, consider what they are teaching children and players alike with their behavior. Some fans act as if the most important thing in the universe is their team winning the game — an event that will long be forgotten weeks or years later. One Saturday, Polly and I attended a boys’ basketball game where a man in his sixties sitting two people away from us spent the entire night — with a blood pressure-raised red face — hollering at the officials. He was quite entertaining. He was also a buffoon.
The worst fans are the parents who spend their time constantly coaching their children from the stands or verbally disciplining them for not playing harder, making the shot, defending the opposing player, or countless other offenses. These parents, intentionally or not, embarrass their children. I’ve seen more than a few players cringe when Mom, Dad, or Grandpa hollers at them from the stands. These players have coaches, so there is no need for parents to be coaching them from the stands. Let the coaches do their jobs.
What is it we want high school players to learn from the game? Sports are meant to teach life lessons; lessons such as life is hard and sometimes the best team doesn’t win the game. Sports teach players that life isn’t fair, and that sometimes no matter how hard you work, you are going to fail. These life lessons and others prepare teenagers for the real world, a place that will eat them alive if they aren’t prepared. Facing adversity is essential to future success as an adult. I mentioned in a post titled Dear Bruce Turner one such experience I faced as a tenth-grade basketball player:
You were my basketball coach. Trinity sponsored a team in the ultra-competitive high school age Church Basketball League. One game I had a terrible night shooting the ball. I was frustrated and I told you I wanted out of the game. You refused and made me play the whole game. My shooting didn’t get any better, but I learned a life lesson that I passed on to all my children years later.
I learned on that night to never quit. Play hard, even when it seems everything you do is failing. Teenagers need to learn these kinds of lessons if we expect them to grow up into mature, responsible adults. What they don’t need to learn is that it is okay to yell, holler, scream, berate, and ridicule people who do something you disagree with. Coaches and fans alike do a great disservice to players when they go after officials and the opposing team’s coaches and players. The game’s importance will quickly fade away, but the lessons taught to players and children in the stands last a lifetime.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Daughter felt her 7yo and 5yo sons must get into soccer in the soccer-obsessed city of Liverpool UK. They say every child born there is born either a LFC fan or an Everton fan. The indoor soccer school that they joined had thick glass windows for parents to watch. She disliked the attitude of the 7yos’ parents who shouted comments – unheard by the kids – to foul or hurt other players. The 5yos’ parents didn’t seem to do that. At the end of the term, 5yo showed me his medal. Since he’s not a good player, I asked what it was for. He said it was awarded to him for being the one who was always the first one to rush over to any injured or fallen player to see if they were OK. This granny couldn’t be prouder of him!
Oh boy, have I seen some things as the parent of 2 kids who played sports!
Town recreation sports could be rough with parents coaching teams of kids with disparate abilities. Some parent coaches were screamers or treated their kids and the skilled kids preferential. My husband LOVES baseball and eventually coached our son’s team as he couldn’t stand some of the guys coaching (“daddy-ball” or screaming coaches). His goal was to teach the kids AND have fun so that the kids would love the game. After his 1st year coaching, he met with the other coaches before the season to do the “draft”. He walked in and said, “I’ll make this easy. I have my son, the assistant coaches’ kids, and I will take anyone you don’t want.” So these other dads were thinking they hit the jackpot and would win the championship at the end of the season. So my husband had the kid with diabetes, the twins who couldn’t catch or throw a ball, the 3 misbehaving knuckleheads,and the kid who had just moved to town from Long Island. These aren’t the kids you’d think coukd play the game very well. He worked with them, bought practice balls for the twins (whose dad had died a few years ago) so they could safely practice catching without killing each other, and he let each kid choose a walk up song that we played using our personal speaker at games. This group started getting better, and they were winning games. Every kid played the same amount, and they played different positions so it wasn’t just the “good kids” at key positions. My son happened to be one of the most skilled players, but he sat the bench when it was his turn like everyone else. One game a dad came to my husband and asked why our son was sitting the bench. My husband replied that it was his turn to sit. The parent said, but dint you want to win? My husband said, “I want all the kids to play, learn, and have fun.” The team went on to play an undefeated season and win the championship – the team of “misfits” that the win at all costs coaches didn’t want.
Travel soccer was quite the scene. At one of my son’s games, a parent from the other team kept screaming at the center ref. The center ref gave a warning, and the dad kept screaming. The ref gave a yellow card,and the dad kept screaming. Then the ref gave a red card and told him to leave the facility. The dad walked 20 feet away where he could still see the game. So the ref red carded the head coach and made him escort the parent away. The game was more peaceful after that.
When my kids were in middle school and high school, they refereed rec soccer for the younger kids. One parent-coach in our town was known for being a real screamer. Our friend was in charge of scheduling the refs, and he would pay extra out of his own pocket to get our kids to agree to reffing when Enzo was there. He called it “the Enzo Tax”.
My kids remember all the awful things coaches and parents said and did at games. None of that made any kid a better player.
I’m reminded of a profoundly wise little saying about raising kids. I only learned it too late in life to make me a better example. It helped me understand why I had been a troubled kid. It’s elegantly simple. Kids don’t do what you tell them. Kids do what they see you do. I saw and modeled all my Father’s worst behaviors which were many. To be fair, I also saw and modeled a couple of his good qualities that helped me survive but it took a lifetime to stop modeling his worst qualities. Setting bad examples for kids teaches them to be bad examples. It’s a form of child abuse to be a bad role model. Unfortunately, it’s done from not knowing better, not caring, and/or inability to do better.
I thought sports were supposed to be fun for children. Leave out all this emotional nonsense and just let them play sports for FUN. If you want to scream at something watch professional sports on TV and scream there. Every child/teen is a valuable young person no matter how good they are at a sport. Give them the emotional balance to play the sport for themselves not for the parent,
You are very correct. For example, teach them that are still valuable even if they (and/or their team) lose a game. This is a very important emotional lesson.