Watch: Softball tournament completely devolves into chaos as parents spark wild melee
At the Tri-Cities softball tournament in Kingsport, Tennessee, the assertion often made that the worst thing about youth sports is the parents was on full display.
Call it the “Brawl at the Brickyard,” as Brickyard Park devolved into a melee as parents of the rival youth teams got into a donnybrook in the viewing area.
The video is a wild ride of overweight men rolling around on the ground, one guy standing just outside the scrum kicking the pile like a soccer ball, a brave mom pulling one of the guys out of the pile by his legs like you’d pull a temper tantrum-throwing toddler — it is a piece of performance art.
Meanwhile, the actual softball players, part of a USA Softball under-12 tournament, just wanted everyone to stop fighting so they could get back to playing the game.
And because kids always seem to get the worst of it when parents break the rules, the two teams, the East Wilkes Cardinal Heat and the Blue Ridge Explosion, visiting from neighboring North Carolina, have been barred from future tournaments, all because some lunkheads got in a scrap rather than let their children play.
Local resident Lesli Hicks told WJHL-TV in Johnson City, Tennessee, that she’d never seen anything like it in her life.
“I just felt like everybody was really immature,” Hicks said. “I don’t know what they hoped to accomplish by acting like that, it didn’t benefit their children anything and it really just shows poor sportsmanship.”
Hicks went on, saying she was glad that the offending parents weren’t her neighbors in Kingsport but rather a bunch of out-of-towners who couldn’t behave themselves.
“I mean, I’m a screamer at baseball games. I like to yell and scream, but I do my best to scream positive things to the kids and just encourage them,” Hicks said. “Sure, there are parents that are out of control, but for the most part, what I see locally everyone keeps themself well in check.”
USA Softball Tournament Director Tina Gale did not mince words in her condemnation of the parents’ behavior.
“I’ve done this for 10 years and never once had a physical altercation. This was the first and hopefully the last,” Gale said. “We run a very clean organization, we run good tournaments, but unfortunately it happened on our dime and we don’t take things like this lightly. We would never condone that kind of conduct.”
Todd McLemore, whose parks-and-rec department hosted this parks-and-wreck, said that the brawl started when fans of the Explosion got vocal and upset about what they saw as bias in the calls made by the umpires in favor of the Cardinal Heat.
Which, well, even Indiana Pacers fans knew enough not to slug the nearest fan of the Cleveland Cavaliers during the first round of the NBA playoffs, so what’s their excuse?
McLemore was mainly concerned that losing the softball tournament would ultimately cost not just the players but the town, and delivered a quote worthy of Leslie Knope in summarizing the situation.
“Historically, my dealings with USA Softball have been nothing but positive,” McLemore said. “If it were my choice, they’re an excellent renter and I’d hate to see them go.”
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