Cheap Shots and No Morals

As life marches on through a spring time that's less enthusiastic to arrive than I am to have it here, my 12 year old is in the midst of his spring lacrosse season. It's a blast but I gotta tell ya, the competition beats anything we've endured in the past. The competing parents are also a completely new breed.

Now, lets establish first that few folks could top me in competitiveness. Lets say I like the feel of winning. Don't most? But when your son is on a younger team and your school has lost half its athletes to a new school that opened down the block, you get used to finding value in the level of play and that can-do spirit than you do in the final figures on the scoreboard. It's a building year, shall we say?

We don't have a goose-egg in the win column but we're about 50/50. We can edge out the teams from south of the city because they don't have nearly the programs that are in North Atlanta. But up here? Talk about some seriously dominant programs and teams. The coaches typically bark at the players in voices normally reserved for basic training. In the Marines.

One team in particular we played in a brutal game pretty early in the season. They are clearly one of the (if not the) top team in the area, and that's saying something when you remember the area is full of really good teams. We arrived on a balmy Saturday with the winding whipping 30 degree temps through their majestic wind tunnel of a stadium. And there, as Popsicles in the stands, we watched this team walk all over us 15 - 0. All the while their coach was still screaming at their players like they were the ones losing horribly. It wasn't enough that they were running up the score--they weren't doing it quickly enough. Apparently they needed to crush our spirits faster.

Best of all: they were on our schedule to play again. Super. At least the second game was farther into the season when our former motley crew had more time to play together and form some cohesiveness as a team (that team had played together for years under the same coach in addition to being a year older) and we had more practice to perfect some actual plays.

When we arrived for bout number two, this team was still undefeated and still a powerhouse. But our attitudes were great; the boys were actually excited to play this team again and at least show them that while they may have the age/size/experience advantage, we are not as dismal a team as we may have displayed originally. We went into the match up believing that if we could just put some points on the board, we'd consider that a win.

Our parents decided to show up to the 8:00 a.m. match with coffee, donuts, cow bells and big voices to show our boys some support no matter how big the Goliaths across the field were. And the game started with a bang as we racked up the first two goals, unanswered. We were more shocked than they were. But it was then that the other team realized this would be no lay-down encore and they turned up their game. For the remaining time, it was close. We even went up on them another time, winning at 6-5. But it became very physical, very quickly.

Chase had told me after the first sparring that the other players were real smack-talkers, uttering put-downs and crappy insults sprinkled liberally with four letter words muttered low enough for the recipient to hear but not for the refs or coaches. Classy. And this game, if anything, was worse. The team was clearly not used to being beaten or coming anywhere close to it, and their attitudes turned as sour as the looks on their coaches' faces with every goal we scored.

Mid-way through the first half, one of our defenders, a great athlete of Asian descent, got into a heated tussle with one of their players. They were both going after the ball on the sidelines at first but then the focus shifted from the ball to each other and it got ugly. I imagine the kid calling our player a "stupid Asian" probably sent him over the edge and as the refs pulled them apart, our kid ended up on his feet sooner and it was then that he saw--and took--the opportunity to get in the final shot with a kick to the gut.

Turns out, the parents of the opposing team don't like to see one of their kids get a kick to the stomach. This was completely uncalled for, no doubt. Way, way out of line. But it's also not like that was the only thing that happened in the skirmish. Name calling, pushing, shoving, punching, etc took place as the refs trotted over. But what happens last is what's remembered best and that kick was not good. Certainly far from a proud parenting moment, right? It's not like parents encourage their kids to be crappy on the field--at least we don't--but kids, like most, get caught up in the moment and sometimes, anger surpasses all other emotion. We were all stunned silent after that occurred.

The parents of the other team...not so much. "Nice morals!" one yelled. "Great sportsmanship!" "Oh you're a real class act." " You all must be so proud!" And the cat calls continued.

In the face of such an extreme act, we were contrite in the stands. But the longer they continued to insult our parenting and values, the more I boiled. Probably not the best idea to sit the rival teams side by side in the same stands but come on, you're questioning our morals when your middle schoolers know more creative uses of cuss words than I do? And issue racial epithets as they take more cheap shots than my Aunt Hilda on Swinging Oldies Night down at the VFW? Maybe it's that they're all so far up on their own moral high horse they can't hear their own kids resorting to underhandedness and foul mouths when they're in danger of losing a competition. Hmmm, you might even call that behavior... unsportsmanlike.


Our player in white getting pushed from behind: illegal.


Again, our kid in white...the one on the ground.