The Bad Behaviour Bears. At what point is bad behaviour punished?
By Jason Pike
MOBILE, NL – A lot of people in today’s generation might not get the reference of the Bad News Bears! But it’s what came to mind when witnessing the Beaconsfield Saxons this past weekend.
It’s not often that a sports team manages to garner the ire of all of there peers. Let alone in grade 9 boys basketball. Even more so when the problem isn’t the actual players but when the problem, insurmountably, is the parents of said players and the team’s coach.
To anyone that is the parent of a teenage child I don’t have to tell you that they are already full of angst. Throw competitive sports into the mix and the sky is the limit on possibilities. Over the years I’ve heard horror stories of hockey parents and bad behaviour and it’s been pretty consistent but sitting at the Mobile Central High gymnasium this weekend doing game reviews of the Rule The Court Grade 9 Invitational basketball Tournament everyone in the gymnasium got to bear witness to some less than civil parents acting badly consistently over the course of the entire tournament.
On multiple occasions fans and parents of the Beaconsfield Saxons Grade 9 basketball team had to be cautioned by a referee about their belligerence and inappropriateness towards not only officials but kids on the opposing team.
On Friday night at the last game of the day things reached an impasse when parents were witnessed exhibiting some very inappropriate behaviour towards players and officials and the coach of the Beaconsfield Saxons, Nathan Conway. He seemed to be complicit with such behaviour as he demonstrated his own bad behaviour cursing and using colourful metaphors towards a tournament convener who was simply trying to iron out a situation for all parties involved.
I feel that such behaviour is worthy of ejection from a tournament but that will be punishing the kids so at best the coach should have been relieved of his position. But without punishing the kids it’s hard to deal with unruly parents so would next steps be to be to remove non-compliant parents from participating in the games?
The Newfoundland and Labrador Soccer Association had incurred similar situations in the past couple years and in doing so they did just that. In fact, they took it one step further in the that if fans and parents of a competing team harassed officials or became belligerent the referee had the option to stop the game as is and award it to the opposite team.
Suffice to say it only took once or twice of this happening for parents and fans to get the message that bad behaviour it will not be tolerated and ultimately eliminated any further instances moving forward.
But after the events of Friday night it had been hoped, I guess, and in everyone’s minds, that things would dissipate and not continue as they did the previous night but that was not the case.
Let’s look at it this way, you have these kids and their parents there and they’re are acting poorly and the coach is acting poorly and you have 14-year-old kids feeding off of that same energy you are going to be playing with a ticking time bomb and the next day on Saturday while facing the St Paul’s vipers in a semi-final match things began to unravel when he normally competitive Beaconsfield team had to remove their top player for multiple fouls. In leaving the court through a chair literally silencing the whole gym in surprise and shock. And somehow he was still allowed to return later in the game. But the threads had already been pulled. St Paul’s quickly took advantage of the situation winning by 30 or so points.
Yet it didn’t end there. Later that day in the bronze medal game the referees were forced to caution both the coach and the parents about their bad behaviour but it left a lot of other people who witnessed these situations wondering how many warnings do you get before you actually stop threatening to do something and actually act on it. How far does this bad behaviour have to continue before it is actually addressed?
Does it actually have the resort to physical violence before someone intervenes and punishes this poor behaviour? Because that’s the direction this is heading. It’s a powder keg ready to explode and the thing is with most of these invitational tournaments they’re not sanctioned by any governing body per se. They are just different schools hosting their events so their kids can get to play ball. As it’s been done in the past. maybe it’s just a matter of having to boycott particular teams and stop inviting them to invitational tournaments.
All that is being created is a dramatic effect and a risk of something even worse happening.
It’s clearly apparent that unless they are put in check such behaviours will most definitely continue.
