Parents watching kids sport need to take a step back and watch their mouth - researcher

Illustration / Rod Emmerson

A sports sociologist says spectators of kids’ sports need to “back off” in order to keep them in the game for longer.

The comments come after the Herald published an opinion piece from a netball dad about the worst things he had seen courtside.

Over the past decade, the writer said he had seen enough to be sure that at the school level, the game met “every criteria to be considered toxic, devoid of core values, dominated by adults with big egos and warped ethics and elite players with a hard-to-understand sense of entitlement”.

AUT associate professor Simon Walters told Newstalk ZB’s D’Arcy Waldegrave it only takes one person on the sideline to “spoil it for everybody”.

“If we constantly instruct them from the sideline, telling them what to do and praise them when they do well and tell them off when they don’t, that’s the nature of the way we deliver comments from the side, they’re not going to get better.

“It’s their game, not yours, and let them enjoy it.”

Many children stop playing sport at age 15, despite the nationwide Active NZ 2017 survey showing participation was at its highest from ages 12 to 14.

Walters emphasised there was nothing wrong with competition or winning, but over-competitive behaviours created a problem.

Ten years ago, Walters worked on a study that recorded the comments of parents and coaches on the sidelines of rugby, football, netball and touch matches and 22 per cent of the comments were perceived as negative.

Researchers monitored behaviour and were asked for the gut feel too, and the study found 40 per cent of more than 200 games watched were perceived as a negative environment for the players.

“It only takes one parent constantly having to go at the ref or at some of the players or one of the players to create that sort of negative environment for everybody involved.

“So most people behave positively but all it takes is one person on the sideline of the game to spoil it for everybody.”

Walters, a researcher focused on enhancing the quality of youth sports experience, said there was “absolutely” evidence that sideline behaviour turned children away.

Research from around the world showed there were a number of factors behind children stopping playing sport but the perception of not feeling good at something was a major driver.

“That comes from getting constantly criticised from the sideline for making mistakes,” Walters said.

“Other parts of it are the social pressure that comes from competition structures like overuse injuries, and when the environment is too pressurised.”

Luke Kirkness is an online sports editor for NZ Herald. He previously worked as an assistant news director in the Bay of Plenty and before that at the NZ Herald, covering mainly consumer affairs. He won Student Journalist of the Year in 2019 at the Voyager Media Awards.