It’s become just too much for the Vancouver Island minor hockey association.
The yelling, the abuse, the threats, not on the ice, but rather from the stands, where parents of the young players get out of hand.
Jim Humphrey, president of the Nanaimo-based Vancouver Island Amateur Hockey Association, says the organization is now seriously considering banning spectators from games. In an open letter to members, he says the association is considering a spectator-free weekend to protest the unruly behavior of parents against the on-ice officials and players from opposing teams.
The Island hockey association organizes minor league games in 35 arenas for about 7,300 children, with about 1,100 officials.
Most of the officials are young themselves, and Jim Humphrey, president of the Nanaimo-based Vancouver Island Amateur Hockey Association says about 200 or more quit each year because of the verbal abuse from the stands. He says the abuse has been getting worse in the past few years, and now it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find people willing to become officials.
Humphrey says the association has tried several approaches to stop the abuse of players and officials, but that it seems to be a losing battle, and efforts have fallen on deaf ears.
The letter notes that playoffs are approaching and that it regrets that the association may have to take this drastic action unless parents change their behaviour.
Taming parents not easy- RCI Feb 2014
The problem exists throughout minor hockey across the country.
In a 2010 survey of 632 minor league referees published in the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, some 600 of the respondents said they are targets of verbal assault while 46 per cent are threatened by physical violence.
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