Ranking Insufferable Adults Found at Kid's Sporting Events
Oh we got plenty of offense, thanks!
Last weekend I spent nine hours watching kids play sports and I am not okay.
While kids were ducking passed balls, pulling kinesiology tape out of their butts, and stopping mid-field to tie a cleat during a clutch sudden-death Hail Mary play, some highly invested adults (and some children) were losing their ever-loving shit.
We all know sports parents are the absolute worst and bless them all because if they didn’t exist, we wouldn’t get signs like this.
When we arrived home after our marathon spectating event, I felt like Dorothy returning from Oz. Did these crackpots with clipboards really exist or was I trapped in a Capri Sun-induced fever cyclone?
Because they love statistics so much, let’s rank these weekend warriors from least to most punchable1.
They’re Just Snacks, Janet (3 🥊 out 5)
Some parents (moms) always bring snacks, some will never bring snacks, and some riffle around in their glove box for a Luna Bar sample they got from a 5k three years ago and call it good.
But not Janet.
Janet always goes a little extra with her Capri Suns. Why just hand a kid an aluminum pouch of sugar water when you could place that pouch, along with an iced oatmeal cookie ZBar, bag of Sun Chips, foam basketball pencil topper, and motivational affirmation printed on baseball-themed scrapbook paper into a Temu tote bag?
Janet. This is too much.
First of all, do kids even like ZBars? They taste remarkably like the packaging they come in and they reek of healthy. That’s the kiss of death for kid food, Janet! You know this!
Second, why are you so committed to creating more garbage for the backseat of my car? Do you know how many pencil toppers and ZBar stumps are left in Shell station trash bins every weekend??? Just toss the kid a bag of Fritos and live your life.
Not on My Turf (4 🥊 out of 5)
Long gone are the days of popping a squat on the grass or standing up to watch your kid’s soccer game. Parents these days are treating the sidelines like they’re the shores of Lake Como, setting up yurts with plumbing and maid service. Their portable chairs are nicer than my living room furniture.
They have cup warmers, hand warmers, and muscle warmers. These kids go to school in December in mesh shorts and Crocs, but you’re telling me little Bentley needs a heated jacket to keep his pitching arm warm in June?
And then there’s the parents who show up four hours early to unpack camp with their canopy chairs, freestyle rockers, and pop-up weather pods.
WEATHER PODS!
Look at these assholes:
You can cram a whole family of assholes in this one!
Looks like there’s no room for Grandma though.
Sorry, old lady. You’ll have to carry your own shelter like the sad, osteoporosis-ridden turtle hag you are. But thanks for dragging your ass out of the ol’ Craftmatic to attend Briannaleigh’s polo match.
Bottling Up Your Emotions (4.5 🥊 out of 5)
It’s not just the parents who are monsters. Their kids can be too. But it’s the parents fault, obviously!
Did you know the water bottle you pack for your kid directly correlates to their assist-to-turnover ratio? It’s science, Mom and Dads, so quit trying to pass off that stainless steel, double-wall vacuum insulated bottle you got for free from your office team building event seven years ago as a legit hydration vessel. The only acceptable choice is this one:
But Shelly! That’s just a plastic Gatorade bottle! It’s not even Stanley or its lesser predecessor Hydro Flask!
Uh, yeah, I know! I am very versed in Water Bottlenomics. This isn’t any ordinary plastic squeezable Gatorade water bottle. This is the Gatorade Gx with pod enhancing technology. See that cap? Also not ordinary. It includes the patented pod piercer. Pods, if you are uninitiated, are capsules filled with goo that turn basic, healthy water into GATORADE. And they only work with THIS water bottle! Why buy Gatorade that already comes in a plastic bottle when you can buy a separate, more expensive plastic bottle and a case of patented pods, to make your own Gatorade in a plastic bottle?
Also the pods apparently taste disgusting so we’re not even using the PATENTED TECHNOLOGY or the case of pods I bought so the reality is this bottle only holds basic, flavorless, WARM water and if you show up on game day with anything else, prepare to ruin your kid’s life.
We Want a Ref. To Yell At. (1,790 🥊 out of 5)
Perhaps the most recognizable of all the sports tropes are the Parents Who Scream (PWS.) They’re as common a sight as a robin in April and like those beautiful bastions of Spring, there are different variations of PWS’s.
Parents Who Scream…at Refs
Referees, even if they are children, are getting yelled at. By parents. Parents who are strangers. Grown ass adults yelling at someone else’s kids who are spending their Saturday afternoon wearing scratchy, black polyester pants and unflattering stripes trying to teach your kid what a double dribble is. What is this— the 80’s?
Sometimes they are volunteers. Almost always they are teenagers. Yes, they have no idea what they are doing. Doesn’t matter. Parents gotta challenge the call.
At my son’s flag football game his friend Henry made a tremendous catch. Even the other team applauded. Except this one dad who charged onto the field screaming, IT BOUNCED BEFORE HE CAUGHT IT! IT BOUNCED!!! OPEN YOUR EYES, YOU IDIOT! YOU CAN’T COUNT THAT!
Umm, sir?
Kindly take to your pod, push the vein back into your forehead, and shove one of Janet’s homemade protein balls right up your pie hole. These are 10 and 11 year-old kids. Not one thing happening in this game is going to put a ring on anyone’s finger.
Except for maybe Henry.
Parents Who Scream…at Parents Who Scream
This not-as-common species is quite a spectacle to behold! It’s hard to be mad at PWS@PWS because they’re doing the lord’s work and it can certainly liven up eleven innings of kid-pitch baseball. But beware: These scream-offs can escalate quickly, especially when it’s a mom going up against an opposing team dad.
PWS are an invasive species and are seldom appeased, but they will try to justify their behavior by claiming ignorance, excitement, and a desire to preserve the integrity of the game.
“Hey man, I just want to understand the rules because clearly rec ball is different than pro ball, yeah?”
Umm, yeah, Bryce, it’s a little different.
And for the record, Henry definitely made that catch.
Coaches Who Scream…at Everyone
Another common inhabiter of the Screamus Maximum Phylum is the Coaches Who Scream. Got to see one of these majestic assholes in all their glory as well.
The opposing basketball coach— a woman— literally yelled at her team for 45 minutes. Talk about stamina! And not one thing that came out of her hot, little holler hole was encouraging.
She was telling her team to suck less while they were winning. She told them run faster when they were already at the other end of the court. Somehow they were unfazed, even chuckling a little when things got extra spicy, and that really set her off.
When she saw SMILES and heard actual LAUGHTER, she became ENRAGED. That was when she delivered her best work:
“Stop smiling like some dumb, little pussies!”
???
The murmur of parents rippled down the line of folding chairs.
Did she just call our kids pussies? Is that allowed? What about dumb? That seems bad too.
I don’t know if there’s a bylaw in some online kids coaching training manual or something, but yeah, I’m pretty sure calling kids “dumb” or “pussies” is a hard no2.
Middle-Aged Lady Moms (1.5 🥊 out of 5)
Super excited that my kid joined a club basketball team so I'll get to engage with assholes from cities all over Western Washington.
Those new moms will watch me from their memory foam reclining camping chairs inside their heated weather pods where Wisteria’s mom will lean over to Wexley’s mom, offer her a wood fired oven zucchini pizza bite, and say, “Look at that idiot mom ruining another pair of Uggs standing in that muddy field. Also nice pants! Was yoga even invented when she bought those???
And Wexley’s mom would GUFFAW, swallow her third pizza bite, and say, “Ewwwww! I bet she makes her kid do rec league sports so she can put on those sad pants, sneak into the yoga room at the Y during half-time, and use the Pilates reformer BECAUSE SHE’S TOO POOR TO HAVE ONE IN HER HOUSE!
Well, ha, ha. Joke’s on you, bitches! I sneak into the yoga room during games too!
See? Sports parents are the absolute worst.
XO,
Shelly
Parents Who Think are Better Than Parents Who Scream
I was invited partake in one of the best Q&A’s OF MY LIFE by the incomparable and acclaimed
over on Parents Who Think. Definitely check out Parents Who Think and also Danusia’s amazing book, NOISE: A Manifesto Modernising Motherhood. Yes, you can absolutely buy a book based on the title alone!Want to support a Middle-Aged Lady (but from afar so you don’t get her gross sweat on you?) It’s easy!
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Figuratively! I’m not condoning violence, obvi!
Otherwise more middle-aged lady moms would be coaching, no?
Oh my god please tell me the weather pods are not real?!?!??! Please!!! My kids are not old enough for sports yet and I am quaking in terror. How did you not punch all of these people?!
Masterclass. The youth sports drama is truly next level.