skip navigation

We All Yell at the TV

By Aaron Paitich, Touchpoint Media, 02/21/17, 9:00AM CST

Share

“We all yell at the TV,” said David Jacobson, a father, longtime youth sports coach and senior marketing manager for Positive Coaching Alliance.

It’s true. It’s pretty much engrained in our DNA as sports fans to yell at the TV or from the stands during games. We feed off the intensity of competition and it becomes emotional.

But at youth hockey games, it’s important to remember why we’re there in the first place: To support a positive experience for our children, so they reap the benefits that come from youth sports: friendships, skills, life lessons, strong character traits, etc.

“You’re there as a parent,” Jacobson said. “If you keep the principle in mind that you want your child to have the most rewarding youth sports experience possible, you’ll dial back your behavior. You’ll find a way to be mature and contribute to what is going to be best for your child.”

Here are five common phrases parents may find themselves or fellow parents yelling from the stands and Jacobson’s thought on how to limit the shouts in the future.

Shoot!

Telling your child what to do from the stands is actually counterproductive to development.

“Rather than you yelling any sort of instruction, the coach has a broader goal,” Jacobson explained. “The idea that the child should be learning to make decisions on his or her own on the ice. That independent decision-making process is one of the major benefits of being in youth sports to begin with.”

If you asked your child or the coach if they like it when you yell instructions from the stands, what do you think they’d say?

Hit Somebody!

Things can get a little tense out there.

“Nobody’s perfect,” said Jacobson. “Everybody succumbs to emotion in the heat of the moment competitively because it’s your flesh and blood out there.

“But, you have to do it. You have to find a way to refrain.”

Come On, Ref!

If you do tend to get emotionally caught up in the games, there are a few things you can do.

“Sometimes that might be closing your eyes,” Jacobson said. “It might mean taking a little walk. Or maybe it means taking some deep breaths or some other little physical reminder I’m here to help my kid get the most out of this experience possible, and my yelling ‘shoot’ or ‘pass’ is counter to that more important goal.”

Remember, it’s just a game. Do you want youth hockey games to add stress to your life or do you want it to be enjoyable? Also, think about the message you’re sending to your kids if you’re making excuses for them because you think the refs are to blame for something that goes wrong.

Dump It In!

Maybe it’s not you. If you see a parent that’s misbehaving and there’s not an immediate danger to children, it can be a tricky situation.

You can try distracting the parent.

“Let’s say you’re sitting right next to the parent that’s yelling,” Jacobson added. “’Hey, hey, tone it down. It’s going to be OK.’

“At the lowest levels, just raise the consciousness. Sometimes they don’t even know what they’re doing. They’re not even aware of it or they’ve never heard of anything about why you would hold back those sorts of comments at a youth game.”

PCA offers more tactics for parents, coaches and administrators on how to intervene when people dishonor the game.

What Are You Doing?!

Jacobson keeps coming back to this: if we remember why we’re here, then it all becomes obvious.

“It becomes obvious not to make a spectacle in the stands,” he added. “It becomes obvious to let the coach coach and the players play. But it’s not easy. It goes against the grain of the nature of being a sports fan.

“We all yell at the TV.”

Most Popular