“The pandemic may have had a lethal effect on American manners. Lawyers are reporting ruder clients. Restaurants are reporting ruder clients. Flight attendants, for whom rude clients are no novelty, are reporting mayhem; passenger fines have exceeded $1 million this year. Re-entry into society is proving to be a little bumpy.” — Belinda Luscombe, “The Rudeness Epidemic,” Time Magazine
A little bumpy? Ya think? Let’s not kid ourselves. The pandemic might have delivered the fatal blow to whatever was left of American manners, but it was only the final stroke in a long-running illness. Civility in this country has been on life support for years. If you don’t believe that fact, you haven’t been in a hockey rink for decades. And there’s one small group of people who understand that reality better than most.
That “small group” is the bane of every hockey fan, yet we can’t play the game without them. The truth is the players actually appreciate them because they maintain some sense of order on the ice. “They,” of course, are the referees. The zebras. The men and women (and often boys and girls) with perhaps the most thankless job not only in hockey, not only in sports but anywhere.
Hockey refs have been dealing with lunatic parents (and other friends and relatives), overbearing coaches and insolent players for decades. As things have gotten worse, more have left the game. Older refs retire, and there aren’t enough bodies to replace them. Young refs come to the game full of enthusiasm and promise, only to have both drained out of them by the near-constant barrage of harassment.
In Massachusetts, it’s reached epidemic proportions, with Mass Hockey officials reporting a shortage of close to 1,000 refs. Think about that number. … That’s a huge void to fill. I wanted to know what was causing the exodus. So I reached out to a number of refs, including an old friend and former newspaperman. Tom Farmer has been pulling on his striped jersey for more than three decades and has refereed at every level of the game up through high school.
“I love hockey, and refereeing allowed me to play a small part in the sport,” said Farmer. “It's a great part-time job that I used for many years to supplement the cost of my son playing until he graduated from high school in 2012. It's a great workout and I've made countless friendships over the years with other officials, coaches and league and school administrators. Officiating is a true brotherhood and sisterhood with shared love of the game and experiences.”
Sounds like a terrific gig, right? Then why the current shortage? In an open letter, Bob Joyce, Mass Hockey’s president, wrote: “As you may be aware, at this point, a large number of referees have either not returned this season or left since the season started.”
“While we are still investigating and trying to determine the basis, our initial investigation has determined that the biggest reason cited is the abuse they receive from coaches, parents, and players,” wrote Joyce. “The constant harassment over calls over the split-second decisions they are making on the ice has taken its toll. Massachusetts Hockey is down 900 officials from pre-COVID season numbers to now.”
Farmer has seen all of this, firsthand. And, trust me, he’s no pushover. He’s gone toe-to-toe with many unsavory characters during his reporting days and didn’t flinch. But the garbage behavior from hockey “fans” is exhausting.
“I think there is always going to be bad behavior from players, coaches and fans,” said Farmer. “With the amount of money pro players started making over the past 25 to 30 years, many parents are delusional, (thinking) that their kid is going to play pro someday or get a college scholarship. They get way too invested and emotional over their kids playing sports.
“It's the helicopter-parent mentality,” he said. “When I was a kid, I rode my bike to Little League games. My parents came to a few games, but were not there hanging on every pitch and yelling at the umpire.”
Worse, consider how impressionable young children are, and how their parents’ actions will influence the next generation.
“I've found the younger the players, the more rabid the coaches and parents,” said Farmer. “Once you've been in it for a few years and as your kid gets older, expectations get a little more real for most parents and coaches.
“I tell parents with kids playing now that if your kid is that good, they’ll come find you,” he said. “Just because you’re paying two or three grand for your kid to play on a triple-A team doesn’t mean he or she is going to get a full ride at BU.”
Again, there’s more to the ref shortage than any of this. It’s a symptom of a larger disease. Society in general is suffering from a distinct lack of civility. For any number of questionable reasons, people feel like they have a license to act like jerks. Just look at the keyboard cowards on social media (which, as one friend pointed out, really should be called “anti-social media.”). The “no low is too low” level of disrespect is pervasive, spilling over into restaurants (ask any waitress), supermarkets (ask any deli worker), on the roads (ask any cyclist).
In hockey rinks, the long-running “Bad Behavior” show has only gotten worse, on and off the ice, as more and more players and “grown-ups” feel like the rules of civilized society don’t apply to them. It hasn’t been pretty, said Joyce.
“Since this season started, we have already experienced several troubling incidents, including a referee needing a police escort after an 8-Under game, a young female referee quitting in the middle of a set of games due to parent harassment, a parent coming on the ice trying to get at a referee, and parent entering the scorer’s box to berate a player on the other team for a penalty against her child,” Joyce wrote. “These are just a few examples of what is going on every weekend.”
Insane, huh? Think about it — why would anyone want to deal with this abuse? And don’t think this is strictly a Massachusetts problem, or that referees are the only target. Consider the case of a 16-year-old girl, an 11-grader in Pittsburgh who plays goal for her school’s boys varsity squad. At a game in early November, she was subjected to such vile chants from more than 50 students from the rival school that she was reduced to tears during the second intermission. Meaning she was expected to go back on the ice.
“So there were adults behind the benches of both teams, more adults in the stands and, presumably, adults on the ice officiating the game who knew what was going on and did nothing to stop it? That is unconscionable,” wrote veteran hockey scribe Ken Campbell. “Why was the game not immediately stopped? Why did the on-ice officials not use their power to clear the rink of spectators? Why did a young woman who was in tears after the second period have to go out onto the ice and endure more abuse in the third?
“More to the point, what the hell is wrong with people?” wrote Campbell.
I can’t argue with Campbell’s sentiments. Berating a 16-year-old girl? Who does that? I’ll tell you who — the same Neanderthals who enjoy criticizing refs. That’s why so many are deciding the extra paycheck simply isn’t worth the aggravation. It’s getting to the point where rinks — like post offices — are going to start putting up "Most Wanted" posters in the lobby. Yes, the ongoing pandemic has created more tensions, but the underlying issue of rudeness is likely to prove more difficult to resolve than COVID-19.
For the time being, Mass Hockey’s Joyce is taking the high road. “We ask you to practice patience and good judgment,” he wrote to parents. “The children are all watching us and following our example. We all need to make a better effort to respect the officials and keep them working.”
Joyce is appealing to our better selves. I admire his approach, even if I’m too cynical to believe that message will reach the people who need to hear it. Nothing will change until we hold ourselves, and our neighbors in the stands, accountable. Parents and players need to talk with each other. We need to be more tolerant of our refs, and less tolerant of obnoxious behavior.
