Observations of a Recovering Idiot

by James Gowen

At the outset, I have a confession to make. In the past, my actions as a player, coach and fan at sporting events has fallen somewhere on the embarrassment scale between Bobby Knight's chair-chucking and Dennis Rodman's ref-pushing. There have been times that I have yelled at umpires, heckled members of the other team, kicked things that were never meant to be kicked and generally made an idiot of myself. I would like to think that all of that is behind me, but old habits die hard. That said, I am certainly not quite the jerk that I once was, and I hope that my slight improvement in this area gives me the credibility to make some observations.

My oldest daughter, Shelby, began organized sports at the age of three. (Sports at age three?!?! That is a story for another time.) It was about halfway through that first season of Micro League Soccer when I realized how insane it was that I was yelling at a toddler to cut the ball to the middle of the field or score with her left foot. Not only do most three-year-olds not know their left foot from their right, but some of them do not even know that the flat thing attached to the end of their ankle is called a "foot." Since that time, I have noticed that parents typically fall within one of five categories in regard to the way they act at their child's sporting events.

The first category I will label as the "Doters." Doters are the ones that run out on the field when their little Timmy needs his shoe tied, regardless of whether play has stopped. They keep track of how many minutes their daughter has played, and if it is not at least as much as the coach's daughter, they complain as if their child were beaten with rods. They are the ones that think their child is the second coming of Mickey Mantle when, in actuality, the kid plays more like Mickey Rooney. This category represents roughly 9% of all parents and almost entirely consists of mothers.

The next category I have labeled as the "Superiors." Superiors feel as if their child is far and away the best player in the league and that the rest of the league is lucky to be blessed with their presence. Superiors say things like, "My son plays in the 10 and under baseball league right now, but we're thinking about letting him play Double A ball in the Cardinals organization next year." When their daughter scores a goal in soccer, Superiors do not yell, clap or cheer. Instead, they lean over to the person sitting next to them and say, "Ya'll better get used to that." Generally, the children of Superiors are pretty good players. That's the most irritating part. These parents represent roughly 11% of all parents.

The third group is the "Yellers." Yellers are easy to find because they are loud and very common. Yellers yell at refs, umps, players, coaches, other parents, spouses, concession stand workers or anyone else who may cross their path. The problem with Yellers is that their condition is contagious. It seems that everyone around a Yeller will become a Yeller after about the third bad call against their team. I was once a Yeller, and I have a propensity to fall off the wagon when I sit next to one. Yellers represent approximately 20% of all parents.

Surprisingly, one of the largest groups of parents is the "No-Shows." The children of No-Shows are always at the game with a grandparent, aunt, cousin or family friend. If no one is around to take their child for them, the child will just have to miss the game. It's as if these parents accidentally stumbled into the soccer sign-ups when they were trying to get to the "Will Call Window" at a Van Halen concert. No-Shows are mostly young parents who have trouble adjusting to not having a life anymore. Unfortunately, these parents represent about 24% of all parents.

Then there is the "Used-To-Be." This is the guy who can never remember that the garbage runs on Tuesday and Friday but can still give you the play-by-play of the quarterfinals of his Senior High district basketball tournament 17 years ago. This guy will sit next to the field in his lawn chair with a Dale Earnhart, Jr. T-shirt covering all but the bottom six inches of his beer gut, nacho cheese dip dripping from his chin and yelling at his kid to run faster, oblivious to the irony of a man of his physical condition asking anyone to run anywhere. This group represents 64% of all fathers and a whopping 36% of the overall parent population.

There is one more group that bears mentioning. I'll call them the "Normals." They are the parents who act like they should. I'd describe them to you, but I've only seen about four of them in the last six years. It is my aspiration to be a Normal some day. But for now, I guess I'll just settle for being a Used-To-Be.