Soccer Parent Drama: Cheaters, Megaphones, and Showdowns

Well, well, well, it is fall again, and what happens in the fall? When you're a parent, you become busy because you are someone's bitch and chauffeur, and that's what my husband and I are. We have our daughter in several activities, and one of them is soccer. We like it a lot because the parents and kids on their soccer team have been with us for a few years, and we like them. This story is about the soccer season.

Last year, there was one particular game that stood out because the other team were fucking cheaters. They're little girls, and bless their hearts, they're so cute and did nothing wrong, but the coach was a cheater, and one of the other parents was a cheater. 

The Worst Little League Soccer Coach

Okay, set the stage, create a picture: It was raining a bit that day because we all had umbrellas and shit–an average soccer Saturday in Vancouver.

When we watch our daughter play soccer, we bring our lawn chairs and foldable chairs. The other team was on the other side of the line, and it was a standard kind of game. We were very excited and cheered on our girls. Of course, the other team did the same. Everybody loves their kid.

One thing we noticed very early in the game was that the other team's coach was very aggressive and yelled at his team a lot. In particular, one of the players he yelled at, for the sake of this story, we'll call her "Abigail." 

All the parents along the side would get startled when we would hear him yell, "What was that?" or "What did I tell you?" or "Pick up your legs." Except the way he yelled it was in the tone of "What are you doing, you piece of shit?" What he yelled was just short of that. Look, I am not a gentle parent, and my husband's not a gentle parent, but everyone on our team perked up, and we did a double-take, like, "What is this?" 

One of our friends on the team said, "Oh yeah, that's the coach, and that happens to be his daughter."

I don't know if that makes it better or worse. I mean, better in the sense that you don't talk to other people's kids like that. I think it would depend on the context if anyone talked to my kid like that. 

For instance, if my kid wasn't doing her homework, and somebody else could talk to her like that and say, "What are you doing? Do your homework. Do you want to be poor?" And it made her work, maybe. But this coach was extra. He was being a little bit aggressive, sounded very mean, and I would honestly categorize it as abuse. 

VAR Replay: No Goal!

Of course, you feel like you have more rope and more entitlement to yell at your own kid. I feel like it just made us all stop in our tracks, because it was far beyond the line that we are used to seeing crossed when it comes to coaching children's sports, in this instance, girls' soccer. Also, he was picking on her alone, which I'm not sure is a bias in sports, because are you not paying attention to anybody else's kid? 

Anyway, this guy's yelling was not something we could say, “Hey, do you mind taking it easy on that child, even though it's your daughter?" It's like a little league game, and the referee was like 17 years old. It is what it is, even though I hate that phrase. 

A little further into the game, I was recording a video, and it was getting a little bit exciting. The ball was moving, and the girls were really playing offence and defence. The opposition team kicked the ball out of bounds, and the line referee, a parent from the other team, let it go. She just looked around and pretended she didn't see, and then the girls on that team took the ball and pretty much immediately scored a goal, and they all celebrated, and I might have let out a, "What the hell is that?" 

The other parent, the coach, the cheater, said, "What's her problem?" as if I hadn't just caught their team cheating. Again, I have video evidence of this. Eventually, I told the other parents about what I saw, just because it's like a WHAT THE FUCK moment! It's not that we care if we win or lose, or if the other team was better than us. It's the fact that they shouldn't have been cheating. Even if they ended up winning by one last point, that would be fine. I would never take offence at that, but she totally cheated on purpose.

The Worst Sportsmanship Award Goes To This Couple

As it turns out, the cheating line referee was the wife of the aggressive, yelling coach, who is the father, which means they are married. This is nothing against the daughter, Abigail. At this point, we're all feeling sorry for her. 

I didn't know that there were parents who would coach a team and talk so abusively to their daughter. I didn't know that there are parents who purposely do not call an out-of-bounds ball (I don't know if that's the right term, I'm a new soccer fan and mom), and overlook it on purpose for the benefit of my daughter's team. 

These shitty, cheating kinds of people exist, and it starts early. 

Maybe they're the same parents we'll see in headlines many years from now, being college admission scammers who send their kid to a fake rowing camp and register them as a fake varsity-level rower. 

Maybe this is how it starts. Maybe this is how psychopaths are made. I mean, if that is what is necessary to make your child successful or work hard, then maybe that's what's necessary. I don't know. I haven't read many books on it. I hope not. I don't want to cheat and be abusive to my child to make her successful. 

Maybe Abigail would grow up to be more successful or a famous soccer player. 

I Have Video Evidence, Cheater

Anyway, I showed the video of the cheated goal to the parents on our team. They definitely were amused, but none of us cared enough to report it. This is little league soccer. It would have been very disheartening if the girls found out the goal was because the other team cheated. Also, the referee was again 17 years old. I'm not gonna ruin his day by making him go up to the nightmare coach and call him out with video evidence. 

Instead, I prefer to have the video evidence for my own amusement. I don't think I will show it either, because there are kids in the video, and there are kids associated with this man and woman. I will leave it a mystery, but if you're listening: you know who the fuck you are, and you're a shitty person.

Another Yelling Coach: Megaphone Edition

The only other time in the same soccer season that the other parents and I on the team were appalled by another team was also at the coach of the opposition. This coach was an Asian man, and he wore a megaphone or a microphone headpiece connected to a speaker device.

Anyway, he was coaching from the sidelines through his speaker, and it was immensely disruptive. He basically took a monopoly of the airwaves and yelled out commands to his team, "Go faster, pass the ball to Ginny," and completely drowned out all other noise, including coaching instructions from the other team. 

It was very loud and a stupid move. Are you really sharing your strategy with everybody? Unless he was planning to do the opposite of what he was saying, which isn't very clear. I don't know if seven-year-old girls on his team would have been able to take part in an intricate kind of scheme like that.

And in true Vancouver fashion, nobody said anything, and that's where I came in. I didn't want to. I would have preferred that somebody else did it, but I couldn't fucking take the noise anymore. So I pretty, politely and respectfully walked over to the other side of the field and said, “Hey, do you mind turning that down a lot or not using it, because it is distracting to the rest of us?” The coach was very surprised, and he didn't think he had been doing anything wrong. He said, "Oh, okay, well, I have a sore throat, and I wanted to save my throat."

So, he stopped using it for the rest of the half. But then, after halftime, he started using it again, albeit at a lower volume

Everybody, this man's reason for using a fucking megaphone, drowning out every other sound on the soccer field, was to convince himself, thinking only of himself and saving his voice. He thought he was completely justified in bringing this device, which I don't think he probably bought at the last minute. You don't wake up and say, "Oh, I have a sore throat. I should use this thing that I bought one day." He probably already had it and used it all the fucking time. He probably knew it was very annoying and distracting to the other team. It's like a manipulative tactic to throw off the other team. 

In fact, I don't think his voice was hurting that much because he was yelling into the megaphone so that an even louder yell was coming out of the speakers. So I really doubt that his voice was hoarse. He was lazy. He was taking the easy way out, and he knew he was doing something to distract the other team—total piece of shit move. I hope we play him again.

Oh, and my husband took a video of me throughout this encounter because it amuses him. 

Chill, It's Just A Game

Look, at the end of the day, they're just children, and it’s little league soccer. 

I think these yelling and verbally abusive coaches were a piece of shits. Their yelling is so selfish and unsportsmanlike to the girls, who are literally kids. 

But you know what on a soccer field? That is the currency you put in. It’s the skin in the game. If you want to be heard, then you have to yell. That's it.