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The art of being an obnoxious ass

Oct 19, 2009
Frustrated - northside

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My son plays on a travel U10 ( all the boys are under 10 years of age ) soccer club and we play teams from all over the city and other cities and states as well. Over the last 2 years of playing on this team we have encountered many teams we love to play and would gladly play many times over because it's good soccer. There is one team we collectively hate to play, not because of the boys on the other soccer team, but rather the parents of the soccer team and it's coach. I have never met a more nasty group of parents or coach than I have with this team.

 

When we first played this team the coach asked our coach how long we have been playing together and he told her we had just formed the team a couple months prior which was the truth. We ended up beating her team and after the game when the coaches normally shake hands and tell each other, 'good game' she proceeded to walk past our coach and call him a, ' fucking liar' ( I assume because she didn't believe him when he told her we had just been together for a few months ). That was the beginning of this relationship. From that point forward every time we play this team we have to endure the parents of this team yelling and screaming at OUR kids, not their own kids, during soccer play.

 

We played them in a tournament by ft. Ben and while we were IN PLAY, their parents were yelling at one of our players, " You look too old to be on this team!!! how old are you?! When's your birthday?!!!" THIS WAS SAID DURING tournament PLAY to a 9 year old boy!!!! So this boy starts to get upset and cry because these parents are yelling at him. So one of our parents went over to their side to tell them not to talk to our players during play and he couldn't even get them to listen because they were acting like he wasn't there.

 

There is a good side I guess to some of the parents because a few did come up to our side later on and said they are embarrassed by how the other parents act during games.

 

It just gets worse and worse the more we play this team though.

 

One of the major points when we play this team is that soccer, even at this young age group, can get rough. The boys are pushing and shoving to get to the ball first and it does get aggressive. I understand that and have over the last year come to cope with watching these young kids getting aggressive. We played this team once where their boys were being a bit too aggressive and this one play they took out our goalie with an elbow to his face this was after he had kicked the ball away ( think of it like a football quarterback who has thrown the ball and the other team isn't allowed to touch him once he's gotten rid of the ball). So when their player did this the ref never blew the whistle and the father of this kid yelled at the ref to call the foul. The ref said they didn't see what happened. The parents from the other team start yelling at this father that it was a fair play. The father says he just wants his child to be safe while playing soccer because he signed him up to play soccer not football. So the coach on their team yells across the field, "Then take him home!!!!"

 

At this point we, as a collective team, should have just packed up our kids and walked away from this game. Our coach should have gone to their coach and told her that was unacceptable as a coach to say and that she should apologize to the father. But we allowed this nasty coach to bully us into not doing the right thing which should have been end the game. Why didn't we end the game? It would have meant this team gets a 'win' for us leaving.

 

This is the least of their obnoxious attitude. Because we are in the same age group and we do the same tournaments we will invariably be playing the same time they are playing another team and have to listen to their parents screaming and hooting and hollering the whole time while they play the other game. What I have come to notice this team does and makes me want not to play them anymore at any cost is I watched a game they played against another team.

 

I sat there and was a passive bystander to see if maybe I was just being a little too sensitive to this team and wasn't giving them a fair shake. What I saw was that this team played a team that wasn't as good as they were. Before half time this team was beating the other team by 7-0. In soccer that is a huge deficit. It pretty much means you aren't going to come back unless some miracle comes your way. What I saw and heard is that each and every time this team scored a goal, the parents were hooting and hollering and yelling. There's one thing to be happy for your team that they scored a goal, but once the score gets to a point where you are skunking the other team and you can clearly see that the team isn't up to your caliber you stop yelling and hooting and jumping up and down. It's unsportsmanlike to sit there and yell and whoop it up when your team just scored their 10th goal to the other teams 0 goals. Again remember this is U10 division. These kids are all under 10 years of age.

 

So to top off the cherry on this game after they beat the team by a massive margin the team proceeds to run around the field doing airplane wings and the parents the whole time are yelling and partying it up and then to accent their win against this team they start chanting for one of their players to do a 'flip' in celebration. The parents all get together in the middle of the field and sit there yelling, " FLIP! FLIP!FLIP!FLIP!" and they celebrate while a player does a back flip.

 

Every game this team plays it's the same thing. It doesn't matter how much they win by they do the same obnoxious cheering and the celebration show after the game is over is just the final straw.

 

If we were to play this team without their parents there or their coach, it would be a good game, because this team is a good team. They play hard and it puts our guys to the wall to play harder. But at what cost do we keep allowing this sort of behavior from the parents and coach?

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