Sportsmanship - worse in AAU? Getting worse overall?

[CoachCER]

Interesting. I really didn't see too much from fans this year in my age group (15U), though now that I think about it, fewer parents attend. I didn't go to many games in the younger age group, but I do remember one where site management had to get involved with an overzealous dad.

What prompted my first post was an incident last weekend, where the opposing coach of a team we beat in the quarters threatened one of the referees after the game. I didn't hear the actual words exchanged, but my assistant did, and it apparently got fairly ugly. (His team wasn't handling the loss well, which had my attention as we had a postgame incident the day before with a different team.) I spoke with the partner of the referee later that day and I mentioned I was surprised that someone didn't call the police, but she shrugged and said that kind of thing seems to happen a lot, and her partner had decided it wasn't worth the fuss. The team was eliminated, and was from 4 hours away, so he kind of brushed it off.