A parent whose daughter plays high school basketball recently reached out to me.
This person had revisited my October 2023 article on the troubling conduct of parents at youth and high school games. It’s “disheartening,” this particular parent told me, that it has not improved in their state. It even seems to be getting worse.
The individual and their spouse, who preferred to not be identified to protect their daughter, referred to a few recent games that were overshadowed by what parents were doing at them.
Here’s a summary: Berating referees, insulting opposing players and nearly coming to blows with other fans. Two men who supported the same team screamed at each other, visibly upsetting one of their kids.
These apparently aren’t episodes relegated to one particular state.
“We have continued to hear of issues of unsportsmanlike behavior, bench clearing brawls, and other incidents that have no place in education-based athletics,” Dana Pappas, director of officiating services for the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), wrote to USA TODAY Sports in an email.
I reached out to administrators from athletic associations in a few states. As we communicated about how they are debating and adjusting their policies to punish and prevent offending spectators and coaches, a more simple solution came to light.
I thought about Dan Hurley.
The UConn men’s basketball coach and two-time national champion was caught on camera this week telling an official: ‘Don’t turn your back on me; I’m the best coach in the (expletive) sport.’
However, what he said after the game was more instructive for us.
‘I just wish they put the camera on the other coach more,’ Hurley said. ‘I just wish they would show these other coaches losing their minds at the officials. … I see the other coaches as demonstrative as I am.
‘But obviously I’ve created this for myself. I’m not the victim.’
We need to think of ourselves as always on camera as we coach, or a parent, youth or high school kids. Amid a crowd, the actions of just one of us can be the trigger that spirals everything out of control.
Raise your hand if you’ve followed someone sitting next to you with a loud, negative comment about a call. You might not even disagree with it as passionately as that person, but yelling along with the group can become a right of association with the other parents.
Now think of how you act if your team’s coach disagrees with an official.
“We like to say that the coaches have so much power over behavior of both their athletes but also their parents,” Ron Nocetti, the executive director of the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), told USA TODAY Sports this week.
“So for example, if you see a coach jump off a bench at a basketball game, start waving his arms in the air and getting upset about a call, if you look right behind him, you see the parents start to do the same thing. And so we’ve really tried to impress upon our coaches that this is something that they need to look at as far as how they behave.”
Why behave at games? ‘You’re an adult’
The CIF Commissioners Committee is proposing that when a coach is ejected from a game “for reasons other than fighting,” they will miss the team’s next 1-3 games (an increase from just one). A second ejection would draw a six-game disqualification (an increase from three). A third, as part of the current rules, would disqualify the coach for the season.
“I don’t think we’d be doing that if we saw that the coach is absolutely behaving in every respect,” Nocetti says. “It’s not happening. And I know a lot of coaches look at the bylaw and say, ‘Why are we doing this?’ Our simple answer is, ‘You’re an adult. Learn how to behave appropriately at your team’s games, and you don’t have to worry about it.’ ”
The California amendment, which will be voted on in April, also proposes ejected spectators miss the school’s next three games (up from one). Nocetti also said the CIF even has the power to fine member schools for poor parent behavior at games.
Todd Nelson, the assistant director of the New York State Public High School Athletic Association, said the NYSPHSAA has discussed such fines to schools.
But neither state association’s body of membership feels doing so gets to the heart of the issue: Correcting and preventing the behavior.
“If an official makes a bad call in the judgment of the fans and they go, ‘Ooooooo …’ or, ‘You may have missed that one, ref,’ referees understand that’s part of the game,’ Nelson tells USA TODAY Sports. “They understand that not everyone’s gonna agree with their call.
“But it’s when you take it to that next level, and now you are bringing attention to yourself by using inappropriate language, using inappropriate actions and making a spectacle of yourself and just going past that initial reaction of not agreeing with a call, that’s what needs to be addressed and that’s where people have taken it too far.”
New York State has a spectator policy where, if a person is ejected from a game, they are required to sit out the next game and/or complete a parent credential course before returning. Nelson says that once other spectators see the consequence of an unruly spectator being removed, it helps others sitting nearby behave better.
But should continued bad behavior require more than an ejection?
‘There’s been a lot of discussions on different things that we could do,’ Nocetti says about California. ‘One thing that people have asked about — it really hasn’t been pushed to the point of a serious bylaw change in our state — but the one thing that people have brought up is maybe we need to get to the point where if an adult is removed from a contest, that their child on the team is removed as well.
‘And whenever that comes up, our first reaction is how sad is it that we even have to talk about a possible penalty for a child when the adult in their life doesn’t know how to behave at a kids game?”
Coach Steve: Five bold perspectives for sports parents in 2025
Coaches, ‘stop landing planes’ from the sidelines
It’s natural to get emotionally invested in games. But we owe it to our kids to stop short of being the one who goes overboard. In Minnesota, they call a coach who does that ‘landing planes.’
“Stop landing planes out here,” says Jason Nickleby, assistant director of the state’s league of high schools. “Let’s put your arms down and let’s have a conversation. The ones that don’t do that, their players just play and the spectators cheer. Even all the way up into the professional ranks, you have a coach that really is not that engaged with what the officials are doing, their players really aren’t, either. They’re just doing their thing because they figure if the coach isn’t upset, then why should I be upset about the officiating? If the coach is upset, then now I’m upset, and then it just cascades.”
The morning we talked in October 2023, Nickleby had just gotten a report from a football game where an officiating crew was followed to their car by disgruntled fans. Similar moments were reflected that year when the Minnesota State High School League surveyed its sports officials and got 2,600 responses.
According to Nickleby, 94% said their experience was “good or great,” yet every one of them said they had a negative experience with a coach or spectator.
“The message to the schools was, as much as our officials love what they do, they’re one bad experience from walking out the door and not coming back,” Nickleby says. “I told our schools as well: Think of it from a selfish perspective. Wouldn’t you much rather keep your experienced teachers, experienced coaches that do a good job, and you don’t have to keep an eye on them?
“Officials are exactly the same. We’d much rather keep our good, experience people because they manage games, kids are safer, the games go better and less issues for you. So we need to keep our good people. But if they just finally say, ‘Forget it. I’m out,’ well now we’re left with new people who aren’t as experienced, which means more issues.”
This year, the NFHS requested each state provide the total number of new registered officials. It said the 28 states that track that information revealed 21,360 new registrants.
The challenge is retaining them.
From 2023: Big Ten coach: ‘What are we doing to youth sports?’
‘We’re supposed to be teaching young people’
Pappas, the director of officiating services for the NFHS, says the federation is focusing on a mentorship program and increased training and working closely with the National Interscholastic Administrators Association to help keep officials safe.
“While any information would be anecdotal, I am sure that there are still officials walking away from the game because of behavioral issues of fans,” she says.
Remember that as a spectator, schools don’t want you to directly interact with sports officials. We’ve seen too many times how that conversation can quickly escalate in the heat of a game.
Instead, let the coaches and administrators handle it. Or just listen to your kids.
One of California’s most effective tools as part of its sportsmanship toolkit is to have them appeal to you. Before a number of games, a player from each team reads a statement to fans asking them to behave.
A coach can lay groundwork by talking to officials beforehand about ways to handle disputes that won’t inflame the situation. Let’s leave that last part to Coach Hurley.
“High school sports should very simply just be different because it’s not about a contract for winning and losing games,” Nocetti says. “It’s not about the pressure on you to win or lose and not know how to behave. Frankly, it’s not right at any level, but especially at the high school level, because this is education-based athletics. And anyone that behaves that way in high school sports, I simply would ask, ‘Tell me how that’s educationally based? How does that fit in with high school education and what we’re supposed to be teaching young people?’ ”
Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for two high schoolers. His column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.
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