Last week, I attended a minor hockey game in Estevan, at the Civic Auditorium.
As the opposing team made the game closer in the second period, the anger and booing from the crowd over what they believed to be poor officiating grew.
Eventually the venom being spewed by these Estevan parents grew to a level that I have rarely, if ever, witnessed at a minor hockey game.
There were obscenities (and not just the lightweights like hell or damn, we're talking F-bombs and other vulgar name-calling) and other insults screamed at the young referee, who was likely no more than a kid himself.
"F***ing (idiot)!" yelled one dad after a penalty, called with less than a minute left in the game and Estevan having won it already.
"Call something, you a**hole!" screamed one mom earlier in the game, after an Estevan player was injured on a questionable hit.
And so it went, with several other words that cannot be spelled out here.
This was not a pro game, or a Junior A game, or even a AA game. Yes, there is a lot at stake for the young players in terms of pride and accomplishment, as it was the deciding game of a playoff series, but let's get real - there was no ticket to the NHL waiting for any of the winners.
What I saw was disgusting behaviour from a number of so-called adults who would not dare act that way ANYWHERE outside a hockey rink.
One of the most mind-boggling things about the sport of hockey is the people in the stands who believe it is their divine right to rain down abuse on a young man wearing stripes who is doing his best to call a good game.
Was the officiating good in this game? No, not really - although a couple of the penalties and non-calls that had people up in arms were perfectly legit.
Booing penalties and such is a part of the game, whether we like it or not, and I have absolutely no problem with the odd boo or shout at a bad penalty.
That's especially true at higher levels of hockey where the officials are grown men or women who have invested a lot of time in honing their craft.
At the minor hockey level, where the refs are very young men who are doing this to earn a little extra cash, the kind of abuse I saw last week was downright embarrassing and uncalled for.
Hey, you parents who were screaming for blood: Would you behave that way at your workplace? How about your church? Or what about inside your own home, around your kids?
Actually, scratch that. Your kids could hear you on the ice, and I bet they were embarrassed and were wishing you would shut your mouth already.
It's just too bad no one had a video camera so you could see how your behaviour looked to others.
Why do you think there are fewer and fewer referees available these days? Would you want to be subjected to that kind of abuse while doing something that takes up a lot of your time with not a whole lot of pay?
As a parent, would you want your teenager to have to deal with that crap?
We all know about overzealous hockey moms and hockey dads who take it way too seriously. I saw that in person last week. It was ugly, it was embarrassing and these people should be downright ashamed of themselves.
Clearly they never took any of the respect in sport courses that some minor hockey associations are now making mandatory for parents in order to be able to register their kids.
There is a section in the Estevan Minor Hockey Association's zero tolerance policy dedicated to this behaviour and I certainly hope the EMHA has taken notice of what transpired at this game.
Josh Lewis can be reached by phone at 634-2654, by e-mail at [email protected], on Twitter at twitter.com/joshlewis306 or on his Bruins blog at estevanmercury.ca/bruinsbanter. For more on the parents' behaviour and the words that were omitted here, see his Twitter account.
