I grew up playing organized sports for nearly my entire childhood. First it was teeball, then baseball, then a bit of soccer, then only soccer. I have my parents to thank for letting me play and enjoy what I liked throughout my life thus far, but the same can’t be said about many others. 

I started to officiate baseball games when I was 12 years old, then I changed to soccer when I was 15 or so. Something I noticed relatively quickly was that the kids’ enjoyment was directly correlated to their dad’s demeanor. 

The kids having the most fun didn’t have pep talks from their dad in the dugout after every at bat. Those kids looked miserable, shuffling their feet and kicking up dirt once it was time to go in the field. 

For additional context, these kids weren’t older than 10 and it was little league, not even travel ball. 

Something is different about youth sports nowadays. The small town feel is gone and parents pay thousands on gas, coaches and the team itself as well as sacrifice their time for their kid to play on a decent team. 

They pay all this money and spend their weekends driving them around, maybe feeling their money isn’t being spent adequately. So, who do they take this out on? For the most part, it’s the officials. 

In a USA Today article, the National Association of Sports Officials (NASO) surveyed youth officials at all levels, revealing 50% of all officials feel unsafe doing their job, with parents being the biggest offenders. 

A simple Google search of “worst youth sport parents” can lead you down a rabbit hole on Reddit with hundreds, if not thousands, of stories each seemingly worse than the last. 

There is a nationwide shortage of youth referees. Even some of my high school games were officiated by our coaches. 

This causes new referees no older than 15 or 16 to be thrown into sometimes hostile environments and situations they don’t know how to control. Of course, when this happens, many parents have no idea it’s their first time officiating and lack the basic self control to not verbally abuse them. 

Athletes almost never get everything right, same for coaches. Yet, the standards for referees are nearly impossible for anyone, even professionals, to attain. It makes no sense whatsoever that a teenager, or even an adult who wants to make some extra money on the side, is berated by parents when the smallest thing goes against their child. 

Parents don’t act like this for the love of the game. More often than not, there’s another force making them feel the dissatisfaction of the product in front of them. Youth sports have become too expensive for most parents to keep their kids in, especially all the way through high school and college. 

Costs can reach between $3,000 and $5,000 per year for good travel teams when factoring in additional costs. These can include equipment, registration, travel and even private training from washed up athletes saying, “I would’ve made it, but I blew my knee out senior year.”

When you’re spending a large part of your paycheck and putting all of your time into your child’s sport, there’s bound to be some type of resentment towards referees and/or coaches. 

A bright spot in this whole situation is that a lot of clubs and leagues are implementing strict guidelines for what parents can do/say on a sideline. 

During my senior year of high school, I’d referee youth soccer games and before each, a player would read aloud a notecard about values and reminders of the league’s guidelines to the parents on the sideline. 

At the end of the day, the point of the game is to have fun and let the kids be kids. 

There’s no need for parents to put pressure on their 11-year-old son or daughter, acting like a scholarship to Stanford is on the line. 

Those who take sports past their youth do it because they love it, and for that, they have their parents to thank.