Can poor sportsmanship be cured?

Fourth of a 4-part series

A whistle blows. A parent goes wild. He can be heard over the rest of the basketball action on the court and in the stands. He doesn't stop. He's verbally harassing the referee. He walks to the end of the bleachers and continues to berate the man in black-and-white stripes.

Finally, frustration dripping from every syllable, he pushes the referee. The official tosses him — and his son — out of the basketball game. The league bans them from playing or watching for the rest of the year.

Seem a bit harsh?

Not to some who are otherwise at a loss about how to get unruly parents of young athletes under control.

While no one is considering doing away with youth sports, many are pondering punishing children for their parents' bad acts.

"The child is part of a family unit," said Barry Mano, founder and president of the National Association of Sports Officials. "I don't know what else we can do. It's a situation we can't win."

He disagrees with those who say the problem is one of perception.

"It's way, way worse than it appears on the surface," he said. "And the big problem is below high school."

Little league football and baseball coach Scott Cate agrees that punishing the child will keep the parent in line. In fact, he knows it will; he's done it.

Cate had a boy on a baseball team whose father yelled at him constantly. He finally told the boy he couldn't play on the team. He explained to him that his father seemed to disagree with his coaching style, and it might be better if he played for someone else.

"The dad was psychotic," Cate said. "The next year, though, I invited the kid back, and his dad never said a word. He came and watched, but he stayed quiet.

"You tell me that doesn't work? I know for a fact it works. But coaches won't do it."

Finding and implementing solutions to the problem of bad sportsmanship is a challenge because it's difficult to understand just why and how people get so riled up about children's games in the first place.

Perhaps changing the way youth leagues work would help.

Instead of fashioning them after high school, college or professional athletic conferences, less competitive models might be one avenue. Standings, for instance, aren't kept in a lot of Utah's youth soccer leagues, though football and baseball teams have standings, which allow them to pursue playoffs and championships.