I'm a high school principal in the DC area for a private school. Last night, I was at our girls' varsity basketball game. We were playing at the away school, but I live nearby and decided I wanted to attend. During the game, the away team was shooting a free throw. A mom from our school yelled, "Miss it!" right before they shot the ball. The student athlete made the free thrown and the fans from my team sort of laughed at the adult and she laughed, too. She then yelled out, with a bit of laughter in her voice, "well miss this one then!"
A male student walked over from the other side of the bleachers and yelled at our parent, "We don't do that kind of thing here! Stop!" He then repeated it, again yelling toward the parent. Two parents from his side came over and pulled him back. Our parent, to her credit, didn't respond negatively and said she didn't want to get into it with a student. She remained mostly quiet the rest of the game. I walked over to that area of our fans and said it would probably be best if we cheered for our team and not against their team. There were no further issues or interactions for the rest of the night.
This morning, my athletic director and I received an email from the away team's coach apologizing that the student confronted our parent, but implying that the adult's behavior was severely inappropriate. Here is the coach's narrative, with a couple of names taken out:
"I wanted to quickly follow up to let you know that I spoke to my student last night after you left and he understands how he could have handled that situation differently and apologizes. As I mentioned to you last night, (our coach's name), he is a member of our student-athlete leadership committee and just last week, our leaders got together with a group from (other private school 1) and (other private school 2) to work on our new league Code of Conduct. I am proud that he felt empowered to step up when he felt cheering was crossing a line but we discussed how that situation could be handled in the future.
On our end, we are working on how to display good sportsmanship and what that looks like in our gym. Where we feel the line was crossed is that adults were the ones making targeted comments (yelling, "Miss it") at the student shooting free throws. It is one thing for kids to cheer like that but we feel as though adults should be held to a different standard. It makes it an unsportsmanlike environment when that happens and we hope in the future to avoid those situations. "
I'm looking for some fair perspective here. I don't feel like what the parent did was that over the line and when I was growing up playing basketball in Texas, we got a lot worse than that from fans. When I was a volleyball official in the 2000s and 2010s around Austin, I certainly heard worse from the fans. I do believe that you can cross the line and become personal, which isn't appropriate. However, this felt like pretty low on the inappropriate level to me.
I'd love to hear from all of you regarding your perspective. Did my parent cross a line? Should we address this and ensure that we talk about the appropriate fan behavior? Is this coach being too soft?
A male student walked over from the other side of the bleachers and yelled at our parent, "We don't do that kind of thing here! Stop!" He then repeated it, again yelling toward the parent. Two parents from his side came over and pulled him back. Our parent, to her credit, didn't respond negatively and said she didn't want to get into it with a student. She remained mostly quiet the rest of the game. I walked over to that area of our fans and said it would probably be best if we cheered for our team and not against their team. There were no further issues or interactions for the rest of the night.
This morning, my athletic director and I received an email from the away team's coach apologizing that the student confronted our parent, but implying that the adult's behavior was severely inappropriate. Here is the coach's narrative, with a couple of names taken out:
"I wanted to quickly follow up to let you know that I spoke to my student last night after you left and he understands how he could have handled that situation differently and apologizes. As I mentioned to you last night, (our coach's name), he is a member of our student-athlete leadership committee and just last week, our leaders got together with a group from (other private school 1) and (other private school 2) to work on our new league Code of Conduct. I am proud that he felt empowered to step up when he felt cheering was crossing a line but we discussed how that situation could be handled in the future.
On our end, we are working on how to display good sportsmanship and what that looks like in our gym. Where we feel the line was crossed is that adults were the ones making targeted comments (yelling, "Miss it") at the student shooting free throws. It is one thing for kids to cheer like that but we feel as though adults should be held to a different standard. It makes it an unsportsmanlike environment when that happens and we hope in the future to avoid those situations. "
I'm looking for some fair perspective here. I don't feel like what the parent did was that over the line and when I was growing up playing basketball in Texas, we got a lot worse than that from fans. When I was a volleyball official in the 2000s and 2010s around Austin, I certainly heard worse from the fans. I do believe that you can cross the line and become personal, which isn't appropriate. However, this felt like pretty low on the inappropriate level to me.
I'd love to hear from all of you regarding your perspective. Did my parent cross a line? Should we address this and ensure that we talk about the appropriate fan behavior? Is this coach being too soft?
