Winter is here with a variety of team sporting codes and school derby days that bring out the monsters in moms and dads whose support for their kids hits fever pitch. Don’t be those parents, writes Gasant Abarder in a new #SliceofGasant column.
Abarder, who recently launched his book, Hack with a Grenade, is among the country’s most influential media voices. Catch his weekly column here.
For the last few weekday mornings, I’ve had reason to smile – even on the dreaded school run. That is because something as quintessentially Cape Town as koesisters on a Sunday morning, gatsbys and Tweede Nuwejaar is back after people who apparently know radio have deprived us for close to a decade of the lekkerness.
That’s right folks, Ryan O’Connor is back on breakfast radio. Well done, Smile FM on a massive coup. And as I switched over to 90.4fm, old Rocky was bang on the money like my favourite CD with topics you can relate to like: What kind of parent are you when your kid participates in sport?
The mornings are crisper, the winter clothing is out and the smell of freshly cut grass is all the nostalgia needed to be that embarrassing mom or dad. On his first show on Smile FM, O’Connor joked about screaming encouragement when his girls were on the netball court.
Nothing wrong with that. We need more parents like him to back their kids. But this weekend, my teenage daughter banned me from her school’s derby day. I had broken one of my own sacred rules: To never coach my kids before, during or after a game. She was right. I deserved her red card!
The previous weekend I had suggested she mark her opponent a bit closer than she did. As she pointed out this weekend, she already got her coaching from the people qualified to coach hockey. And not from the dad who screamed ‘offside’ on the sidelines (yep, I found out later there was no offside rule in hockey).
I was a stand-in coach for my other daughter’s under-10 girls’ soccer team at the Salt River Blackpool Super 7s festival. Hosts Blackpool had progressed to the semifinal by the time I got involved. That is as far as they got. But I remember being frustrated by parents screaming the opposite instructions to what I had told the players.
It is quite dumbfounding for someone as young as 10 to have to listen to two sets of instructions. Moms and dads, for heaven’s sake: we don’t tell kids’ educators how to teach mathematics, right (well, mostly because we don’t know maths!). Let’s lay off from the sports coaching too, please!
At the same Super 7s festival, there was a magical moment that was rather an exception to the rule. And at least, this time the intervention came from someone who was qualified.
It happened during a penalty shootout in an under-12 round-of-16 knockout match between hosts Blackpool FC and Shosholoza FC. A Shosholoza player had seemingly smashed his effort into the upright and the referee disallowed the goal.
A Blackpool executive committee official, closely observing the action, then went over to the ref and pointed out that the ball had actually crossed the goal line and had hit the angled upright that supported the goal.
Video evidence on a cellphone proved the official was correct, and the goal was allowed to stand.
The official – whose intervention went against his own club – deserved the highest praise for his display of integrity. Instead, he suffered some abuse from his club’s supporters for what they deemed interference.
I’ve seen moms and dads push their 7-year-olds so hard to perform and to ‘remember what we practised in the yard’, that it no longer becomes enjoyable for the child.
But that isn’t the cruellest bit of parental abuse I’ve witnessed. I once sat disgusted in the stands during a soccer match my daughter was participating in. A fellow parent was shouting at a 9-year-old girl that she wasn’t good enough and should be replaced. Even the opponents’ parents started to shift around uncomfortably as the volley of abuse continued.
Let’s not be these parents. What we need to encourage is friendship, camaraderie and being a good sport. Sure, play the match hard within those white lines, but make pals off the field after the final whistle.
Allow the coaches to coach. Our jobs are to cheer as loudly as possible, without embarrassing our children or abusing the ref, opposition or coach. We’ve had our fill of white-line fever. Let’s not spoil it for our kids.
In the meantime, I will be tuning in for more Ryan O’Connor tips from a model dad who supports all that his two daughters do – even though we know he knows nothing about netball!
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Picture: Gasant Abarder
