Soccer

S has played soccer since she was 5 (well, we actually had a brief foray into soccer when she was 3, but it was kind of a disaster.)

JB has coached her team for the past few years, and it's had its ups and downs. All children of a certain age have ADHD apparently, so no one listens to what he says. When they were younger, they just did cartwheels and pretended to be fairies. Now, they chit chat about how gross boys are or whatever. There have been some annoying parents over the years (thankfully, most have been on other teams). And occassionally, there's a child who doesn't respect authority....

So a couple weeks ago, we had a game where the refs didn't show up. The opposing team was supposed to bring refs from their club, but failed to do so. When their coaches declined to ref the game, JB volunteered to ref, so I had to coach.

The game was very close - tied @ 3 goals apiece, when the opposing coach hollered that it was time to end the game. JB replied that by his watch there were 3 minutes left. Within those 3 minutes, our team scored the winning goal. A most unfortunate set of events.

As JB and the girls exited the field, the opposing team's assistant coach got up in his grill and started hollering that he was a cheater. I didn't notice what was going on - too busy lining our girls up to shake the hands of the other team. So our girls walked by the other team. Some of their girls were crying - others were yelling that there was no way they were shaking our hands. Others were just slapping my girls' hands really hard.

Things got worse from there. The asst coach came up to JB once again, and JB tried to set him straight, seeing as how they had refused to ref the game and JB had volunteered. Also, they were supposed to bring a ref in the first place. They guy continued to yell, over and over: "Don't even talk to me. You're a cheater." I was actually scared this whole thing would come to blows.

This is a deplorable situation - why would an adult set that kind of example for kids? Why did it matter that much? I mean, maybe JB did mistime the game, but it could've just as easily benefitted the opposing team - it's not like he kicked the winning goal in himself.

Parents can be assholes, and sports makes them even bigger assholes.