SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Why punish the kids for out-of-control parents?
Oct 21, 2014, 2:15 PM | Updated: 3:08 pm
Two Seattle-area youth football teams for players 9 and 10 years old have been banned from the playoffs because their parents blew up on the sidelines. (AP file photo)
(AP file photo)
Two Seattle-area youth football teams for players 9 and 10 years old have been banned from the playoffs — not for anything they’ve done wrong, but because of their parents.
The council for the Greater Eastside Junior Football Association banned the Renton Five Stars and the Bothell Cougars after a brawl in the stands at an Oct. 4 game in Bothell.
“I jumped in to try and break them up. That’s when one of the coaches from the Bothell team jumped over the fence and attacked me,” Courtney Stephens, a mom whose son plays for the Renton Five Stars, told KOMO, which reports police cited two Bothell parents and recommended assault charges.
Dori wants to know why the kids are being punished.
“Why not just ban any parent or coach,” he asked. “Ban them for life if you want. I’d have no problem kicking them out from every event your league hosts for the rest of their lives.
“If you’re a kid who works hard or a parent who does things the right way and now your team has been suspended because some idiot got in a brawl on the sideline? That’s not fair, that’s not right,” Dori said.
The Bothell Cougars did not qualify for the playoffs this year, but the Renton Five Stars did. The Renton parents feel their punishment is especially unfair.
Dori wonders if the tension and violence has to do with too much adult supervision.
“Does everything in our kids’ lives today have to be structured? When you see an 11-year-old kid and they have to pull out their iPhone calendar to see if they can schedule a play date with a friend in between their piano lesson, tennis lesson, basketball practice, and soccer game, maybe that kid is just a little bit over-scheduled. Maybe mom and dad are a little bit out of control with their precious little snowflake. That’s why parents are getting in brawls on the sideline – because the parents have things completely out of perspective.”
Renton will be allowed to play in the lower-tiered silver bracket playoff, according to KOMO, but parents said it’s not enough.
Dori said he’s received plenty of D-mails from angry Bothell parents. He promises to follow this story and get more answers.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
