You Played Yourself 10/29

It’s about that time. Welcome to my personal You Played Yourself section, where it’s my personal post to go in on whatever I feel needs to be talked about, who I feel needs to be called out, etc. Hopefully you enjoy – comments are accepted and appreciated on here, on Twitter, on anywhere.

This is something I have always felt vehemently about, and I’ve wanted to post on it for the longest. After a couple of the games that I was at last week were marred in my mind because of it, I realized it was time to do some calling out. This YPY is dedicated to… parents. Yepp, you got it. The ones who made you. Not every single parent, some are fine. We’ll specify a little more. Loudmouth parents who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, but they feel the need to talk. Why? Do you realize exactly how idiotic you sound? Or does it not matter? Some schools are worse than others (I’m sure everyone that reads this will automatically think of 1, 2, or 20 schools now). In my particular area, West Canada Valley is notorious for them. Every school has at least one, but one voice out of a crowd goes unnoticed. When that total a-hole brings a crowd with them, or gets a bunch of people on their side that don’t know what they’re talking about, that’s when it gets bad. I’ve learned that parents don’t give a damn who catches it from them. Officials, coaches, the opposing team, doesn’t matter. If an idiotic parent is pissed, someone is going to know about it. My experiences this week alone:

Onondaga/WCV girls soccer – Granted, the officiating was piss-poor from Albie – I talked about that in my Most Valuable Thoughts on the game. However, the sort of garbage I heard during that game was ridiculous. And again, although I have as much of a beef with Albie’s officiating (and response to parents’ yelling) as I do with the parents, once the parents started yelling, they didn’t stop, even if it was a good call. I have specifically seen problems at WCV with parents yelling at opposing coaches because of the setup of the field – and although I was on the opposite side and away from that for once, I did hear some things being yelled in the direction of the Onondaga coach and a couple players. I also heard Onondaga parents yelling directly at a couple WCV players. That’s how you lose control of a game.

New Hartford/Jamesville-Dewitt girls soccer – This made the previous game’s parents look like friggin angels. Wow. First off, the parent who bagged on me for wearing a jersey that said Bless Ballers on the back can stick it where the sun don’t shine – do your research homie. King of Kings. Division 1 talent up the ying-yang, including Cornelious Vines, Mookie Jones, and Lamar Kearse (J-D graduate, you guys should know about that) on the squad. But I digress. The parents were on everyone – including each other – early and often. I personally didn’t think the game was out of control. There were a couple shoves that weren’t called, and I was surprised they let them go, but I’ve seen worse. Apparently these assholes in the stands hadn’t. A few J-D parents were getting into it with the officials so bad, I made a point of tweeting about it, which I usually reserve for the game and the warmup/halftime music. It was a poor display, but it got worse. New Hartford parents started to get into it a little bit too. Not as bad as J-D, but bad enough. Then a J-D parent crossed the line; they yelled about a New Hartford player with the New Hartford player’s parents there. Gasp! Of course, with how the game had been going, the New Hartford parent has to yell something to the J-D parent, and they yell a little bit until one of them pulls the wedgie out of their stuck-up ass. Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! And that was just the first half. By 5 minutes into the 2nd half, I truly didn’t know if I was at a soccer game or if Jerry Springer’s bodyguards were going to come out, and the subtitle on the scoreboard was going to say “I had sex with my girlfriend’s baby daddy and now we’re both pregnant!”. A New Hartford player gave a J-D girl a little box-out undercut near the goal, probably should’ve been called, but it happens. A J-D parent, who admitted he had no knowledge of the game of soccer a couple minutes after, had this to say: “Hey ref, you need to grow some.. you know what!” Beautiful. He was still complaining about it 3 minutes later when the ball came back down to our side. “I’m watching you ref, I’m watching you”, glad to know you’re watching the ref and not the game, boss. I can only imagine how the last 13 minutes was – it was a good soccer game that left a bad taste in my mouth because of the parental activity. Funny thing is that the communities of Jamesville, Dewitt, and New Hartford are very similar to each other. Semi-affluent suburbs outside of cities that are the hubs of their area. Lot of doctors, lawyers, and business professionals live in these communities. As I like to call it, “Beamer Central”. For all of these communities being so similar, the parents really seem to not like each other. Maybe there are DWI lawyers competing with each other? I know dealing with them drove me to drink.

Lowville/Herkimer football – I was on the Herkimer sideline for this one with the noise of Herkimer’s team and the game itself drowning out any ridiculous in-game parent talk. My story comes from after the game. I’m talking with MVT correspondent, Little Falls Times & Herkimer Telegram sports editor Jon Rathbun. A Lowville parent (by the way, they lost 41-7) is walking around the track to the exit with her son. She sees me and yells over something along these lines: “Ya know, you need to teach your kids how to have class. When someone gets hurt, you’re supposed to take a knee!” I look at her and calmly say the following – “First, I’m not the coach, I’m not the assistant, I’m not the AD. I’m not the person to talk to, and I can’t help you out here. Second, when are you talking about?” Her next comment was “I KNOW, BUT I SAW YOU THERE!”. Wait.. so you know I’m not the person to talk to, but your loud ass wants to be confrontational with me? With me? The one person you probably don’t want to be confrontational with because I give it back anyway, but the person you know has no say in anything? You can’t fix stupid. Also, congratulations lady, you’re not blind. You were able to point out the 6’6″ kid on the sideline. Want a cookie? So, I figured out when she was talking about, and it was simple why Herkimer didn’t take a knee – no one did. He was down for 3 or 4 minutes, and both teams were directed to go to their benches and get water but remain on the field. That’s what they did. No one was Tebowing. I told her that. What I didn’t tell her is that it was the same kid who put a helmet into the knee of feature RB Matt Borek well after the end of a play and took him out for the rest of the game. Pretty cheap play – let’s be honest, no one cared that this kid was down. Comments I actually heard from unbiased reporters with me were along the lines of “Karma’s a bitch” and “He had it coming to him”. I didn’t say that. Why? I have enough class until you come at my character. She hit me with the classless comment a couple times (oooh, burn) and wished injury on Herkimer players in the future. Now listen here, bitch. You want classless? I’ll show your ass classless. What parent wishes injury on teenagers of the opposition? Seriously? And her kid next to her even had the brain to turn to her and say “Mom, just shut up”. By the way, right after that, she said “And you can tell whoever does that MVT shit to blow it too”. Well, you should’ve seen the look on her face when I said, “Ok, I know who it is, I’ll get ahold of him now”, picked up the phone, pretended to dial a number, said “Hello?”, then switched it to my other ear and said “Hey what’s up?”. She got the hint. By the way, I’m teaching classes on how to get parents to shut up – signups coming soon.

My problem with the loudmouth parents is this – first, the smartest parents tend to be the ones that don’t talk. I’ve maybe heard 2 loudmouth parents in my entire life that actually know their stuff. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, just shut up. Just because you’re up in the top row yelling “OFFSIDES” or “OBSTRUCTION” or “TRAVEL” doesn’t mean it’s going to do a damn thing. The game will be called how it will be called – as a matter of fact, if you ask most officials, what they’ll tell you is that if people keep yelling, they’re more willing to make calls against that team. Fact of life. Second, you simply make yourself sound like a dumbass… which you probably are. Third, the vast majority of parents try to teach their kids how to conduct themselves with class and dignity. How classy is yelling at a ref to grow a set? How classy is yelling about another kid? How classy is yelling at another parent? We won’t even mention the Lowville mother. There’s something else I was always told and taught – practice what you preach. If you tell your kid to be classy, you better show the same amount of class you want your son or daughter to have. You can’t tell your kid to have class and turn around & be an ass. Like an airplane over the weight limit, it doesn’t fly.

To the parents out there that stay quiet, don’t malign the coaches that probably know more than you, don’t malign the officials that also probably know more, we appreciate you. That exemplifies what most parents want their kids to be like. High-class. Not high-ass. Not saying that you can’t voice your opinion if you have a problem with something – there’s a much better and much more effective way than being a bleacher coach or bleacher official. They’re like backseat drivers. Their opinion doesn’t matter, and life’s easier if they stop talking. So next time you want to yell some ridiculous crap, spouting off at the mouth about whatever crosses your mind, think first. Would I want my kid to sound like as much of a complete jackass as I’m about to? Do I have any qualification to yell this more than the fact that my kid’s sitting on the end of the bench, or I think my kid is D-1 when they’re the 2nd best player on a Class C team? Like the Spike Lee joint – I hope you do the right thing.

– Jeff Mlinar