Child's Play    

By TAD BARTIMUS

It's summer. Parental exhibition season. Soccer moms, baseball dads, Wimbledon exhibitionists in the family box -- and in Lynnfield, Mass., a funeral for one hockey father who died after a fight with another.

We say it's not who wins or loses, but how we play the game. We say it's for love, not money. We mouth all kinds of homilies about level playing field and being good sports. We adore sappy movies about underdogs and battling uphill against long odds. Then we keep Bobby Knight as the Indiana University basketball coach with a little slap on the wrist and an admonition to try harder to be good boy. We keep rape and burglary suspects on college teams. We feel sorry for a multi-million dollar football player hanging out with alleged killers. We excuse violence, on and off the field, by saying the offender "used poor judgment." 

Above all, we worship winners. By our own reactions we teach our kids that winning is the only thing that matters; all the rest is for wimps and losers.

Don't believe it? What's the first question we ask our athletes when they come home from a game/match/meet? Is it, "Did you have fun?" Or is it, "What was the score?" 

I grew up in a family where, on hot summer nights, the whole town was at the ball park watching Little League and American Legion baseball. It was community sport to yell at the umpire. The fans were always mad at somebody – the other team, a coach, parents of the opposition, even one of our own teammates who'd dropped a line drive, blown a bunt, hit a high fly once too often. "Kill the coach," somebody would yell, and everybody'd join in: "Yeah! Kill the coach."

In Lynnfield, Mass., somebody did. Michael Costin was a 40-year-old hockey coach who got into a fight this month with Thomas Junta, 42, whose son was on Costin's team. Junta apparently thought Costin was urging the boys to play too rough and challenged the coach. Costin died two days after being beaten unconscious in front of his young players. Junta has pleaded innocent to manslaughter.

A mourner took his twin 10-year-old sons to Costin's funeral, he said, so they could "understand the horror of anger gone wrong." A court will decide who -- of the two aggressive, belligerent men acting out in front of their sons -- bears more responsibility for this tragedy. But the bottom line will always be that Thomas Junta and Michael Costin were two grown men at a sporting event who let their egos and rage ruin their lives, and the lives of everybody who loved them.

How many of us could say, "There, but for the grace of God, go I"?

Parents need to let their children live their own lives and stop getting vicarious gratification from their son the soccer star or their daughter the tennis champion. Is it really necessary to question umpires' and coaches' judgment in the heat of competition? It only embarrasses the child. What they want to hear are cheers. Positive experiences teach them how to be happy, successful young adults through the joy of sport. Parents need to remember that the child is the participant, they are just the spectators.

We're on the cusp of Olympic mania again. The summer games in Sydney are less than two months away. We will soon get "up close and personal" with the thrilling, the poignant, the miraculous. Each athlete came from a mother and father; hundreds of those parents will be in Australia to root for their child. 

The very best of them – like Sam and Georgia Sampras -- will sit tensely watching their child perform, pray hard for them to have a wonderful, injury-free experience and praise them no matter what the outcome.

"One thing my parents have always been, and that's my parents, not tennis parents," said Pete Sampras, after he won his record-shattering 13th Grand Slam men's singles championship July 9. "They supported, did what parents do. They just love you. They always say the right things. They've never wanted to get in my way when I'm competing."

The best praise, as from Pete Sampras, comes from the child; get out of their way to let them learn hard lessons the hard way while experiencing the joy of sports. Saying to them, "Don't do what I do, do as I tell you to," and then acting like a fool in front of them is a bad way to teach. Parents need to do what they always want their child to do: behave. 

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