By Dan Bylsma

Hockey has been the topic of conversation in our country in the past weeks like never before and like those of us in the sport never wished it would. My father and I have been contacted more than a time or two by the national and local media to give our opinion of the "rink rage" case (Hockey father manslaughter case comes to trial in Mass.) and we've see all sorts of experts on various TV shows talking about the State of the Union of youth sports in general and hockey in particular.

One such expert claimed that the reason for the rise in rink rage is the motivation to qualify for college athletic scholarships. We've check with several Universities and learned that on average there are $4 in academic scholarships for every dollar paid out in athletic scholarships. Yet we don't read of parents engaged in fisticuffs over SAT scores or GPAs or parents confronting each other over cello scholarships. It seems that if a scholarship was such an important goal, the parental focus would be on encouraging good grades (costing nothing but time and energy) instead of spending the equivalent of the cost of a college education over the course of a youth hockey career hanging out in cold ice rinks and traveling to play in towns they wouldn't think of visiting on vacation.

Another believed that the rink rage is an extension of the violence that's prevalent in hockey as a sport. While I’m quick to acknowledge what’s often shown on the hockey highlights is not fiction, I'm also not sure that's a valid correlation. There is no violence allowed in youth hockey, it's almost non-existent in collegiate hockey, and fighting in the NHL has been significantly reduced over the years while at the same time, the violence by adults in the stands in youth hockey has increased.

One talking head suggested that parents are more invested today in the progress of their children, more intensely involved than in days past - leading to confrontational over-reaction. While that would be nice to imagine, an educator of my acquaintance who is nearing retirement claims that the noticeable decline of parental interest and involvement with their children's academic progress is a widely discussed topic among educators. Many parents never show up for parent/teacher conferences, PTA meetings, or school programs but the same parents wouldn't miss a soccer game.

I'd like to suggest that we're not dealing with a youth hockey problem. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with youth or hockey or the youth in hockey or hockey as a child's pastime. It's provided a wonderful wintertime activity on the frozen lakes and ponds over North America for generations of kids. It's a societal problem that adults bring to the rink, the court, and the playing field. It's manifested in unabashed verbal abuse to officials, many of whom are little more than children themselves. It's seen in confrontations between parents and other parents, parents and coaches, and most sadly - parents and their children ("I didn't spend all this money for you to play like a wimp. You need to be more aggressive out there!!!"). The problem is also manifested in "road rage", and "shopping cart rage" which, by the logic of some of the experts, we should attribute to violent roads and evil shopping carts.

It was not the participants who were stopped recently from being verbal in an Ohio youth soccer league, it was the adults who where muzzled. The officials in a recent youth hockey game cleared the stands, not the players. It wasn't a participant in the Massachusetts rink pick-up game who was on trial for manslaughter and it wasn't a child who splashed hot coffee in the face of a referee in a recent tournament. It’s a litany of adult miss-behavior that could go on and on.

I think there are two question to be addressed. Why have parents become so invested in the progress of their children in youth sports to the exclusion of other arguably more important endeavors, and, why the amount of "parental involvement and attendance in a youth sport program is usually inversely proportional to the focus on the benefits for the children" - to quote my educator friend.

As a NHL hockey player with only an accounting degree, I'm not qualified to answer these questions. But from my own experience, I can tell you that youth sports in my family was ever, always, and only a child's pastime - a reward for eating my peas, doing my homework, and mowing the lawn - all considered far more important in my development as a person than a youth hockey or baseball game. And in spite of what many would consider draconian parental restrictions on our hockey development (church attendance was required on Sunday morning - game or no game, we couldn't play travel hockey until we were 14, and couldn't play the year around), three of us played college hockey, the third brother could have but chose to forego hockey and concentrate on his education. And I'm living my dream - perhaps not in spite of these restrictions, but because of them.

I think society should be concerned about the values we teach our children when we would spend $6,000 for a child to play travel hockey and wouldn't spend $60 on his or her reading tutor or we would travel across state lines for a soccer tournament but not across the street to go to parent/teacher conferences. What do our children learn about respect for authority figures when their parents are openly abusive to game officials and coaches. And what do we communicate when the child’s sports schedule is tacked on the refrigerator door – not the schedule for religious instruction and church or synagogue attendance.

I contend that the only reason for participation in youth sports is to have fun, increase athleticism, and learn life lessons. Ideally the life lessons will be the value of team play, sportsmanship, playing by the rules, and taking coaching to improve one's skills. Society should be concerned that the life lessons that are being modeled out (and learned) are not as idealistic; rather that differences of opinion are is settled by violence rather than debate, that outrage can legitimately generate from pastimes, that verbal and physical abuse are legitimate outlets for frustration, and that "winning at all cost" has no cost.

It's long past the time some adults in youth sports clean up their act, focus on the wholesome purposes of youth sports, and improve the lessons they're teaching their children or I fear the next trial for manslaughter will be held in Juvenile Court. And the same talking heads will speculate as to why and be skating on the same thin ice.