Sports turn ugly

by Celine Chahine

The old times of joining a sports team to have fun with fellow friends are gone; society has cast a corrupt new twist on sports and has created monsters that only want to win.
A youth assistant football coach from East Baltimore, Aaron McCown, was sentenced to 6 and half years in prison, after he allegedly threatened a referee with a pistol. Some may think that the punishment was a bit harsh and that he didn’t do anything wrong because he didn’t actually fire. The sad truth is that his punishment should have been worse.
Adults like McCown need to learn that youth sports aren’t professional teams like the Red Sox or the Patriots, and that they are just a group of young and developing children. There is always that parent or coach at a youth game that ends up causing a huge scene, whether it’s threatening the referee with a gun or fighting with other parents, or even yelling at your child for not doing well.
All adults who cause dramatic problems should be banned from all youth games. There should be a zero tolerance rule for situations where parents or coaches get out of control, because most times things get pretty serious and result in deaths or sentences to prison. Whenever an adult is acting out of line they should be kicked out or banned, so that situations like the one McCown was involved in don’t happen again.
By doing this sports can slowly turn back into being fun and there wouldn’t be anymore headlines in the news about how some adult killed a referee for making a bad call. For the sake of the children, adults need to be kept in line during sports. After all, the main reason why adults are there, is only to support and cheer for the children, not to cause unnecessary problems.
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