Boston Area Hockey Mom Is Facing Criminal Charges After Attacking A Couple of Refs
CBS News -- A parent is accused of assaulting two referees at a boys high school hockey game in Massachusetts earlier this month, police said.
...According to the National Ice Hockey Officials Association - Massachusetts Chapters, a Taunton woman physically confronted the referees after the game, "preventing the officials from continuing to the locker room." The woman allegedly left before police were able to contact her. They said a Taunton man was also ejected from the rink for verbal abuse.
...This is the second time Taunton High School's hockey team has been part of an assault on a referee at a game. In 2015, an assistant coach of the hockey team was arrested for allegedly biting a referee's finger after a game between Taunton High School and King Philip High School.
I think I have a solution here which could save youth sports in America. Obviously we've been seeing a decline in refs across all sports at the youth level. That's because parents are out of their goddamn mind, abuse the shit out of these guys verbally and physically, and all for what? The $75 game check they get isn't worth that level of abuse and belittlement.
One option would simply be to just pay youth officials more. At least make it worth their time. But nobody wants to give a 15-year-old kid a couple hundred dollars to ref some game between a bunch of 9-year-olds. There's not a budget for that. So instead, we need to get a little creative.
So here's the idea--parents are no longer physically allowed to be at their child's youth sporting events anymore. What we do instead is we open up a bar across the street from every rink and field in America. In that bar, the games are live-streamed onto the TV so you can still watch your precious little Johnny play the most mediocre 12 minutes of hockey ever. There's booze, there's comfortable seating. The kicker here is that the doors are locked from the outside until 10 minutes after the game. That gives the refs enough time to pack up and get out of there before any deranged lunatic parents come sprinting from the bar across the street to attack them. Also each bar as a designated "rage room" where lunatic parents can go in and break shit and/or fight any other parents. Anything that happens in the rage room stays in the rage soon.
Sure, it'll take time and money initially to build and open up all these bars. But they'll make all of that back within the first season of operation. At the end of the day, we are saving youth sports AND stimulating local economies. Refs can get back to focusing on the game instead of having to worry about every little call resulting in a parent trying to punch their lights out on their way to their car after the game. We, as a society, just have to be willing to eat the initial cost of opening up all these bars. That's all it takes to save youth sports in America. Thank you for your time.