Column:

Proud parents essential to sports

By John Hunt

Published Oct. 16, 2009

Each and every one of us has seen it before. Parents on the sidelines of a sporting event who look like they are doing more work than the child athlete — that nut absolutely berating the umpire over a bad call or speed-dialing the coach to dispute playing time for his or her child.

It happens daily in sporting events across the nation, parents intervening in athletics (most often amateur athletics), often to absurd extents in defense of their child.

On Saturday that child was 19-year-old NASCAR sensation Joey Logano. After the finish of the NASCAR Nationwide Series Copart 300 in Fontana, Calif., (a race in which Logano ended up winning after having his car bumped against the wall by fellow driver Greg Biffle), Logano's father Tom had his credentials pulled and was escorted away from the winner's circle after he made at least one obscene gesture toward Biffle.

Sounds embarrassing for Tom Logano, but imagine what Joey Logano had to go through. What could have been tallied as a perfect day now has a minor smudge on it. The younger Logano won his second consecutive race (a feat for any driver, let alone a teenager), but sadly the race will most likely be remembered more for his father's actions than his own.

What the elder Logano did was unsportsmanlike and rude. But on the one hand I can almost see where he's coming from. If I perceived someone as taking a cheap shot or unfairly disadvantaging someone close to me, I'd get mad too. Everyone wants the best for their kid. Success will only happen if the child's yearning for greatness matches their parents' desire for the best and, consequently, if the child tries his hardest, competing to the best of his ability.

When someone doesn't play by the rules, not treating other athletes how they are supposed to, I can totally see how it could get under a parent's skin.

Now, by no means am I trying to justify Tom Logano's completely uncalled for actions, I just understand one of his possible motives. When parents try to completely take matters into their own hands, it detracts from the athletic experience of the child and gets ugly fast. Yet, at the same time, loved ones should look out for one another.

Many of us would cringe if we saw our parents rooting and cheering for us in the stands now. In fact, many of us cringed when we saw our parents rooting and cheering in the stands in Little League. The bottom line is whatever your parents do or did then, they did it for a reason. I'm sure they had a host of other activities they would have rather done on a Saturday afternoon, but instead they devoted their time, money and effort toward a greater cause, a growth. They wouldn't have sacrificed those weekends for games or mornings for practices if not.

So before you kindly ask the referee to eject the dad going nuts over a blown call or the mom obnoxiously attempting to start the slow clap from the sparsely populated bleachers of a softball game, understand many of us will probably do something similar at some point. I know I will, more than likely. It's just a little outspoken way of letting the kids know we care. And letting everyone else know, too.