What is the world coming to when hockey moms and dads are losin’ it left, right and centre? An irate mother lifts her shirt and points out a couple of things to the referees. An over-the-top dad reaches over the top of the players’ bench to massage the throat of his son’s coach till the poor volunteer coach passes out. Dads lie in wait around arena corridors to jump on coaches and refs as they come by. Moms wrestle with other moms in the stands.
Get over it folks! It’s just a game, for cryin’ out loud. A game played mostly by kids. It’s all about fun, not about winning.
When I go to the arena on Saturday afternoons to watch my eight-year-old goalie take on another team, I exhibit none of the traits of the ill-mannered parents referred to above. I am calm, mature, and gracious, hoping to see some good hockey played and practically uninterested in the result of each contest. l hope only that my son enjoys himself, learns some skills and discovers what it means to be part of a team.
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However, shortly after each game begins, I do have to say I notice a few peculiar things happening around me, both on and off the ice. Without fail, it seems, the parents of the children on the other teams usually exhibit some very rude behaviour, cheering and clapping far too loudly and long when their kids score. Almost, you might say, to the point of rubbing it in. It sometimes startles me at the apparent total lack of sympathy they have for the poor players on the team just scored on, especially for the unfortunate goaltender.
By accident, periodically, I end up in the same section of the stands as these people and I am forced to move, by their absence of manners, into an area where my own kind are situated. Out of sight, hopefully, out of mind.
And I have also noticed that the coaches on the other teams go to uncalled-for extremes to congratulate their players when they score, slapping them on the back, high-fiving them, etc. (See above – rubbing it in.)
I would like to believe otherwise, but for some mysterious reason, it is readily apparent that the two teenage referees who work the games have taken a dislike to our team and are making every effort to give breaks to the other teams and none to us. I have not done a statistical analysis yet, but any objective observer can see that we are getting probably 80 per cent of the offsides, icings and penalties called against us. Someone suggested these kids are just learning how to referee, but I wonder if they haven’t already learned too well: a whistle here, a blind eye there, and things have a way of working out, if you know what I mean.
There is also the matter of the young man cloistered in the glass booth who is in control of the buzzer which is sounded every three minutes or so to signify line changes. Why on the earth he would do this, I don’t know, but anyone who can see past his nose can clearly identify his habit of pushing that buzzer whenever our team has a breakaway. And failing to push it on time when the other guys are using my son for target practice. What could possibly have turned him against us?
And finally, though I hate to pass judgment like this, I am afraid I have to report that my son’s team appears to be the only one in his league which is populated by considerate young players who play by the rules and never trip, chop, spear, hook, or bodyslam. Many of my sons’ opponents, on the other hand, appear to have gone to the Goons ‘R’ Us school of hockey etiquette and graduated with flying colours. And, mimicking the example shown them by their elders, have learned well the art of rubbing it in after each of their goals by doing all sorts of dances.
Fortunately, I observe all this atrocious behaviour with a certain detachment and manage, without trouble, to remain unaffected by it. If other people want to live like that, I reason, they are welcome to their misery. I feel sorry for them, really, for they must be so tormented to have to find their thrills this way, never knowing the peace that comes with floating above the fray.
At the same time, there is this one coach in particular who definitely needs an attitude change and I wouldn’t mind a few moments alone with him out behind the arena some time. And a couple of women on this one team have taken things just a little too far, I would say, screaming, as they regularly do, like characters out of a horror movie. An arena ban, I would say, would not be out of the question for them. They look like the kind that just might lift their shirts one of these days. If l was an ordinary parent, I might be tempted to let them make me angry. As it is, I refuse to let any of the unfair, prejudiced, rude, obnoxious, and probably illegal activities on and off the ice get to me. It is, after all, just at game.
You know, just for fun.
(All hell broke loose when I ran this column in the newspaper I was editing at the time. I thought I might have to leave town. I ended up apologizing in print and phoning the coach in question to straighten things out with him. The point of the article was to illustrate that I, as a hockey parent, wasn’t very much different at all from the crazed moms and dads I was critical of. A bit too subtle, perhaps.)
©2005 Jim Hagarty
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