Andy Young: The mystery of the vanishing civility

By Andy Young

I began last Saturday morning by refereeing three youth soccer games. The participants were second and third graders.

After each contest had been completed, several different spectators went out of their way to thank me for refereeing their child’s (or in the case of people who look similar to me, their grandchild’s) game. I really appreciate being appreciated, so just for fun I started counting the individuals whose kindness made me feel good. Alas, I lost track after the 10th person, since I didn’t want to take off my cleats in public.

For the past decade or so I’ve been umpiring Little League baseball, and the post-game comments I receive are generally similar to those I get at soccer games. The players are a little older (up to age 12), but by and large the respect for (and appreciation of) adults in general and officials in particular is consistently good. Occasionally, a coach becomes over-excited in the heat of the moment, but on those infrequent occasions he (or she) always apologizes afterward for temporarily letting competitiveness get the better of them.

I mention this because I’ve attended numerous soccer, baseball, hockey, football and basketball games involving older kids over the past decade-plus, and in several different area towns. The children participating in those contests are anywhere from five to ten years older than the players in the games I currently officiate, as are, one assumes, their parents. When I go to these events I watch, with a reasonably unjaundiced eye, the game, the athletes playing in it, the people in the crowd, and the officials. It probably comes as no surprise that what I observe there is radically different from what I see each week at the second and third grade soccer games.

The skills of high school players are significantly greater than those of their pint-sized compatriots, and because of that the level of play involves a good deal more aggressiveness. But the biggest difference between youth sports and high school sports is the behavior of some of the adults, which quite naturally trickles down to many of the youthful and impressionable players.

Suffice it to say that I don’t see a lot of people going out of their way to thank the officials following pay-to-play travel team games, or after the conclusion of high school athletic competitions. I have, however, seen outwardly rational-looking individuals mutter or shout their disapproval throughout a game, then go out of their way to heap verbal abuse on referees and umpires afterward. The irony is that the vast majority of those people getting abused are far more accomplished at officiating youth sports than much-appreciated amateurs like me are.

Not every spectator at pay-to-play travel team games or high school athletic events foams at the mouth while directing comments toward officials (and occasionally coaches and/or players) that can’t be published in this or any other newspaper. After all, these aren't professional sports. There’s no prize for winning any particular game aside from the satisfaction of outscoring that day’s opponent.

The percentage of youthful athletes in Maine who’ll ultimately get athletic scholarships is small. The number who’ll ever make a living playing a sport professionally is far tinier.

Why, where youth sports are concerned, does civility begin vanishing as the participants age? When does this unattractive metamorphosis begin taking place? Who thinks supplanting unadulterated enjoyment with aggressiveness and antagonism is a good idea? And most mysterious of all, where do kindness, appreciation, respect and joy go after they’ve been supplanted by hypercompetitiveness?

Where are Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, and Hercule Poirot when we need them? <