Videos of two assaults in SC show something to guard against in youth sports | Opinion
Coaching young athletes isn’t all about wins and losses.
In truth, it’s less about getting kids to go right or left than to know right from wrong.
It’s about Xs and Os but also yeses and noes.
Success matters, but character counts, too.
That’s why two videos that surfaced recently in South Carolina — one showing several Pickens County football players from D.W. Daniel High School assaulting another at a camp at Presbyterian College in Clinton, the other showing a youth basketball coach pushing a referee at a tournament in Myrtle Beach — are so upsetting.
It’s one thing to see pro athletes exhibit unsportsmanlike conduct or violence during a game.
It’s another to see it explode among or around children .
Coaches of kids are role models, molders of young men and women, as meaningful as any teacher and in some cases even as important as parents to young people with malleable minds at impressionable ages.
In her autobiography, “Uncommon Favor,” University of South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley shares a lesson she learned from her college coach, Debbie Ryan at University of Virginia.
“Wins are great in the moment, but what her players did once basketball was behind them was the crux of why she coached,” Staley wrote. “For her, knowing she was an important part of someone’s life for the rest of their life was the point.”
Any competition is going to get heated, but coaches should be reflections of the best of us, preaching right ways to handle wrongs and practicing what they preach, keeping kids out of trouble and avoiding it themselves.
Yet youth basketball coach Jarvis Johnson shoved referee DJ Barton so hard July 26 Barton says he hit the ground and lost consciousness “for a period of time.”
Johnson was arrested and charged with second-degree assault and battery. The disagreement was over a jump ball/foul call Barton made in a tournament at the John T. Rhodes Myrtle Beach Sports Center.
Rhodes was mayor of Myrtle Beach for 12 years, and before that, he was known around town as the “father of sports tourism” because he was executive director of the Beach Ball Classic, a December basketball tournament that let high school players compete before collegiate scouts.
Rhodes would surely shake his head at the coach’s shove. No one should condone it.
Barton wrote on Facebook that Johnson “should never be allowed near a youth athlete again. EVER! We keep asking why there’s a shortage of officials. This is why. We keep saying ‘it’s just a game.’ But the behavior from adults is anything but.”
He added, “Officials are being cursed at, threatened, followed to their seats, and now, physically assaulted. And still, many leagues, tournaments, and organizations turn a blind eye until it’s too late. This has to stop.
“We need more than apologies and statements. We need enforceable standards, lifetime bans, accountability, and real consequences for coaches, parents, or anyone who crosses the line. We owe that to every official, every player, and every kid watching from the stands learning what ‘sportsmanship’ is supposed to mean.”
Across the state, D.W. Daniel High School head football coach Chris Stone is on leave after a July 7 fight involving several of his players left one injured and several others facing as-yet unspecified criminal charges.
Police and school officials are asking questions about the fight at a summer football camp, and the case has been referred to the state Department of Juvenile Justice and the 8th Circuit Solicitor’s Office. The solicitor’s office hasn’t said much so far.
Trustees of the Pickens County School District vowed in a statement that the incident “will NOT be swept under the rug, and all appropriate corrective and disciplinary actions will be taken.” The trustees haven’t yet said what charges or disciplinary actions the students face, saying there are limits to what they can release, but they need to explain the punishment in general terms even if the children are minors whose names are protected by law.
There are too many questions circulating about this violent assault not to offer the community a better understanding of what happened to the students, and why, and also why the coach has been placed on leave. Coaches are accountable for the conduct of their teams, and the district has pledged a thorough review of the situation and an investigation of the football program.
Both violent acts caught on video are disturbing. That the vast majority of youth sporting events occur without incident is, of course, worth noting, and celebrating, but it’s also all the more reason to condemn the exceptions.
Youth sports can be violent enough on the field. That violence shouldn’t spill off it, and that message needs to be sent early and often by coaches, parents and the young athletes themselves. One of the lessons sports teaches is that actions have consequences.
The best coaches know where and how to draw the line at acceptable and unacceptable conduct, and the best teams listen. One lesson of youth sports must always be sportsmanship matters before, during and after games.
Kids, after all, learn from adults.
We must all be better when our kids are involved. Otherwise, what kind of message are we sending? What kind of world are we leaving them?