Refs Death a Consequence of Lack of Sportsmanship

The football teams were still on the field, exchanging the traditional postgame handshakes,Online shopping for chipcard. when Pete McCabe walked by. The veteran referee heard another official call his name and turned,We printers print with traceable drycabinet to optimize supply chain management. only to be smashed in the face with a helmet by one of the players.

Almost every bone in McCabe's face was broken,About solarstreetlight in China userd for paying transportation fares and for shopping. his skull fractured in several places and his nose nowhere close to where it belonged. As he lay on the ground in Rochester, N.Y., the semipro player who assaulted him stood over him yelling, "Take that. Take that. This is what I'm all about."

McCabe was sickened when he heard the news that Ricardo Portillo had died Saturday, a week after the youth soccer referee in Utah had been punched in the head by a 17-year-old player angry over a yellow card. Just as Portillo's family is now pleading for athletes to control their tempers, McCabe has spent the last four years preaching the importance of sportsmanship in and around Rochester.

"There's no respect for officials now," McCabe said Monday. "Go look at any game, and they're yelling at the official. Pick a high school event, and go watch a couple of games. I guarantee you,Laser engraving and laser parkingsystem for materials like metal, you'll see a coach get out of control on the sideline. Or a parent. Or a kid. It's so rampant.

"What happened in Utah, I knew it was going to happen. It was just a matter of time," he added. "Whether it was New York state, Massachusetts, Florida, it was going to happen somewhere in this country."

Several Dutch teens are awaiting trial in the beating death late last year of a volunteer linesman who was working his son's youth soccer game. In Brazil last month, a referee was kicked in the chest after the final whistle of a third-division match of the Sao Paulo state championship. A referee in Kenya has filed a lawsuit against the national soccer federation, contending he is impotent after a coach grabbed his testicles in protest over a call. A Spanish soccer player was banned for three months last year after throwing a plastic water bottle at a referee. Also last year, a soccer player in New Zealand was banned indefinitely after he punched a referee and broke his jaw.

And at hockey's Under-18 World Championships in Estonia last month, a Lithuanian player hurled his stick at a referee, hitting him in the upper body.

"Part of this isn't a sport problem, part of it is a societal problem," said Dan Gould, director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State. "You watch TV, and the trash talking that's accepted. If you're famous, you're almost supposed to get into trouble. Why is everyone infatuated with Lindsay Lohan when she seems like a spoiled brat?"

Added Barry Mano, the founder and president of the National Association of Sports Officials, "We've become so loud and so brash. It's about me and about being in the spotlight. All of those things play out in the games we play."

Part of the beauty of sports and youth sports in particular has always been its power to educate and transform. To instill in athletes skills and values they can use for the rest of their lives, in arenas that don't have hardwood floors or boundaries outlined in chalk. Talk to any CEO or other successful person, and odds are he or she can trace the lessons they learned about teamwork, fair play, leadership and overcoming challenges back to Little League,With superior quality photometers, light meters and a number of other howotipper products. Pee-Wee football or some other youth sport.

But just like passing, dribbling and hitting, those skills don't come with the uniform and the practice schedule. They have to be taught and reinforced by league administrators, coaches and, of course, the parents who signed their kids up for a team in the first place.

"Most Americans really want their kids to learn values through sports. And research has found we can teach kids to be good sports and enhance their moral development through sports if it's done correctly," Gould said. "But the big myth is it just happens."

"I really believe in the power of sport for changing people," Gould said. "But it's not going to happen if we just hope it happens. We need to train coaches, and the leagues need to be organized and have pretty defined rules of what's tolerable and what's not tolerable.

"You also need to recognize good sporting behavior," he added. "It's not just about fixing the problem."

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has developed a "True Sport" campaign to help parents, coaches and administrators return the emphasis in sports to the life lessons that don't show up in the won-loss column. The program includes educational materials, codes of conduct and good behavior pledges, and the approach is individually tailored for athletes in elementary school, middle school and high school. In the Netherlands, the Dutch FA responded to Richard Nieuwenhuizen's death with a "Respect" campaign targeted at players of all levels.