Canzano: It's ugly when youth sports coaches fall short

Incident at softball field underscores the problem.

Ugly incident at softball field raises questions.

The North American Fastpitch Association suspended two softball coaches and called their actions indefensible this week.

I’ll say.

A male and female softball assistant from St. Helens caused a ruckus at a weekend youth softball tournament in Newberg and left an 11-year-old girl from the opposing team in tears.

The Astoria Fish have a player named Brinley Stephens in the lineup. She’s tall for her age. Her mother would tell you that strangers sometimes approach and ask her age and height. She’s 5-foot-10.

On Saturday, Brinley hit a ball that ricocheted off the ankle of the opposing shortstop during her first at-bat. A baserunner scored. Brinley safely reached first base. The shortstop was left on the ground, rubbing her ankle. And then, an assistant from the opposing team burst out of the dugout shouting.

“Time!” he cried out.

“I want to see birth certificates or this game is done!” the assistant continued. “This is ridiculous! There’s no way that a 10-year-old hit a ball that hard!”

Some parents in the crowd corrected him: “She’s 11.”

The video:

Order was eventually restored. The game ended a few innings later, but not before some adults associated with the opposing team snapped photographs of Brinley and made snide comments. Some of the players and coaches from St. Helens even refused to shake Brinley’s hand after the game.

The topper came when the male assistant from St. Helens was caught on camera raising his middle finger in the direction of Brinley’s mother, Tracy Burchfield. I don’t know how you imagine a youth sports event ending, but Tracy’s daughter cried. Also, the umpire, a teenage girl, was caught in the middle of the ugliness.

I’m glad the two coaches were suspended. It’s the right move. But I wonder what in the world the adults are doing here. I write this knowing that the vast majority of parents who attend youth sports events do so in a rational, reasonable manner. The actions on Saturday at that softball diamond were reprehensible.

The loss of civility?

Body shaming and bullying?

That wild demand from the assistant to see the kid’s birth certificate — or else!!?!?

I suppose if the coaching staff from St. Helens was that worried about it, the assistants could have pulled out their phones during warm-ups and performed a quick search on social media. If they did, they might have noted that Brinley’s entire family appears to be tallish. She plays volleyball, too. Also, the fastpitch association verifies ages. Or the coaches could have just acted like normal, well-adjusted people and had their shortstop play a few steps deeper when Brinley was at the plate.

Tall?

Sorry, but all I see and hear in the video is adults falling woefully short.

We’ve always had idiots in our midst. That’s not new. Mark Twain warned us to never argue with them. He said, “They’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” But what’s changed in the last decade is the steady erosion of civility. The idiots are getting bolder and acting empowered. From politics to business to youth sports coaching, it’s become a slippery slope.

Whispers became shouts.

Questions became demands.

The facts don’t appear to matter as much as how loudly one declares them. (Tall kids have to carry their birth certificates in their back pocket now?) I’m convinced that the ugliness on display at the softball field was a reflection of our eroding society as much as anything.

A few things:

• The only good that can come from something like this is a reminder to the rest of us that a scene like this shouldn’t ever happen at a youth sports event. Maybe it’s a reality check for some of us. Stay on high alert, folks. These games aren’t for you.

• Your job as a coach is to make sure your team is prepared to play. If you’re coaching an 11-under softball team, you shouldn’t be addressing players on the other team, except to say, “Hey, nice job!”

• Dear youth sports coaches, we appreciate your work. You may be intoxicated by the delusions of grandeur that come with filling out a lineup card for a youth team or the sense of power. I’m here to tell you that nobody mistakes you for a professional sports manager. You’re more like a social worker. We don’t care about your winning percentage or how many players you claim to have secured college scholarships for, or the injury that kept you from taking that high Division I scholarship. Your job is to leave kids better than you found them.

• Does anyone still want to officiate youth sports games? I felt awful for Brinley, who shouldn’t have been publicly shamed. But what about that high school girl who was umpiring? Anyone else surprised that there’s a shortage of umps and referees who want the job of officiating the thankless messes we’re fostering? The next time you see a referee at a youth sports event, take a moment to pat them on the back. I do it, regardless of whether they were good or bad. They’re performing a public service.

I’ve been around sports all my life. I’ve coached high school football and baseball, and third-grade volleyball and basketball, track and field, and youth soccer. One of the best pieces of coaching advice I got came from former Michigan softball coach Bob De Carolis, who went on to be the athletic director at Oregon State.

De Carolis heard I was coaching my oldest daughter’s soccer team years ago. I asked him what conditioning drills I should be doing. I wondered about the substitution strategy. De Carolis and I were sitting at a coffee shop in downtown Portland.

He just listened and nodded for a while.

Then he told me, “Your job is to make them want to come back the next day.”

Even an idiot should understand that.

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