Annotated Bibliography Report
By Kelly Goff
Fall 2002 Generation 17
Instructor, Dr. Leon James
Instructions for this report can be accessed here
topic #1 Sports Rage
What could make one parent angry enough to beat another parent to death in front of children? Sports rage. This is when parents or fans of athletes lose control. Psychologists agree that the competition in sports is increasing. Experts say sports rage is becoming more violent and leading to more deaths than ever before. Jim Thompson, director of Positive Coaching Alliance, says, “Sports in society has a ‘win-at-all-costs’ and ‘winner-take-all’ environment.”
On July 30, 2000, two fathers got into a fight over their sons’ hockey practice. Thomas Junta was concerned that the practice was, ironically, too violent. Michael Costin replied, “That’s what hockey’s about.” In a couple of minutes the two fathers were in a fistfight. Junta had Costin on the ground as he repeatedly punched Costin’s face. Costin died two days later. Sports rage is usually aimed at the other teams’ parents.
Parental rage comes from several factors. Some parents try to live through their child. The other factor is parents’ unrealistic expectations of their kids. Some parents put their child in sports at age 10 and think that one day they'll get a scholorship to a great college. Parents are also protective of their children, which is natural, so it easy to see why some parents may get upset when is their child is put down or rejected.
One solution is a signed oath. For kids to participate in sports, parents have to sign an oath that requires them to pay the same consequences as their children do when they misbehave violently. These consequences include being banned from games. “Parents who hit or throw things may be charged with assault.”
Another solution to sports rage is through education. Professor Leonard Zaichowsky, PhD, at Boston University says, “We need to provide information for coaches, parents and athletes about appropriate behavior.” Zaichowsky says, “Coaches need to set an organizational culture for the team in which it is not OK for parents to scream at officials or each other and to honor the tradition of sportsmanship.” Coaches must set an example as well; they must abide by the rules and show respect to opponent, teammates and their parents.
Assemblyman Adriano Espillat introduced a bill that makes sports rage a Class B misdemeanor.The bill is called “sports rage in the presence of a minor.” This misdemeanor could put a raged person in jail for up to 90 days.
My initial reaction to this topic was shock. What kind of message does a parent send when they act in such an inappropriate manner, especially at a child’s event? As in the case of Thomas Junta and Michael Costin, the fight was over how violent their child’s’ hockey practice was. The parents were fighting over violence, which makes no sense and got them in two places, jail and six feet under. It only adds another statistic to the problem of sports rage. A death should not need to occur before people start realizing this kind of behavior is inappropriate.
What caught my interest was the idea that sports can be such a powerful thing to some people. It makes some people do things they would never do. Even at a game where the children are no older than 5 or 6, these fights between parents and officials break out. It is also interesting to know that it is a type of rage that is occuring more frequently.
In my opinion sports rage is inappropriate. If parents expect their children to behave and walk away from confrontations or fights, they need to do the same. Many parents also coin the phrase, “It’s not what I do, it’s what I say.” I think parents need to be consistent in that aspect. If parents tell their children to behave and not to be violent people, they need to do exactly what they say. Now, I’ll coin the phrase, “Practice what you preach.” This is important, especially for young children, they need to have that kind of consistency in order to understand the idea.
I support what John Hyater, an assistant basketball coach of Prince Georgia said. “Kids today haven’t learned the social aspects of playing,” said Hyater. Kids that are put into organized games earlier will have more exposure to competition, which contributes to rage. Even kids that are 4 years old are put into organized sports. At this age they should be playing with kids and toys without the competition.
There are several solutions out there that I think should be implemented among all organized sports, whether it is a school sport or an outside one.The one I would like to see implemented the most is one that is already effective in Jupiter, Florida. In Jupiter, the local athletic association requires parents to attend a seminar. This seminar teaches parents how to act and control their tempers at youth games. If parents do not attend the seminar, their child cannot participate in sports.
The significance of what I have found is one that can be put to use in youth sports. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, around 6 million high school boys and girls are involved in team sports. This is high school alone; it does not include the millions of kids who take sports in intermediate school or outside of school. With this many kids playing and close to double that amount of parents, and the increase in competition, sports rage is likely to occur.
The next step would be to require all teams to have some kind of seminar to help parents deal with their emotions at games. Rather than just reporting these sport rage incidences on the news, we should do something about it, like require attendance to seminars or signing an oath, stating that consequences of rage are understood.This would help prevent many fights and quite a few deaths.
This was a fairly easy topic to search. I found a lot of sites full of useful information. I used Google and typed in “sports rage.” I also did a search for online magazines and journals on this topic; those were a little more difficult to get a hold of. However, I do think there is enough information out there on different cases of sports rage to make people realize that it is an ongoing problem that is occurring more often than we think. It should make people see that something needs to be done to stop the sports rage.
References:
Written by: DENISE MANN, WebMD Medical News
July 12, 2000 Healtheon/WebMD.
Dying to Win. Violence in Youth Sports
Issue: Sept 15, 2000
COPYRIGHT 2000 Weekly Reader Corp.
Unsportsman-Like conduct on the Rise in Players & Problem of Violence in Sports
By: Denis Mann
WebMD Medical News
By: Sascha Segan
How An Epidemic of Obnoxious- and Sometimess Violent- Parents is Ruining Youth Sports
January 2001 Reader's Digest
topic #2 Eating While Driving
Driving distractions cause accidents that could have been avoided. I will discuss the dangers of one of the many things people do while driving, eating. Some Americans think that they just don’t have time to eat, and many others think driving is a “waste of time”. Why not make it useful and eat while driving? To reduce the likelihood of an accident, people need to give all their attention to what’s in front of them, the road and other drivers.
Distractions cause 25% of accidents. The Network of Employers for Traffic Safety, (NETS), found that distracted drivers cause as many as 4,000 accidents a day and cost more that $40 billion a year. Ford Motor has built a minivan with, among other things, a microwave, a freezer and a trash compactor. This makes it convenient for someone who eats while they drive.
Not only the act of eating is a distraction, but what happens when a person spills their food or drink in their car? For example chocolate, it gets all over everything a driver touches. If chocolate is on the drivers fingers, they will not use those fingers on the steering wheel. If chocolate does get anywhere else, the automatic thing to do is to clean it off right then. This takes attention away from the road. NETS also came up with a top 10 list of what foods or drinks to avoid while driving. The worst item on the list is coffee, especially hot coffee. The number 10 spot went to chocolate.
Eating alone has its own distractions. However, the avoidance of a spill as well as cleaning a spill if it occurred, are also distractions that can take your attention off the road and lead to an accident. “Many drivers drink coffee in the morning on their way to work, they do not want to spill their coffee and wear food-stained clothes all day, so they urgently try to clean the spill but crash instead.” Fast-food merchants are of no help. They have cups that are make to fit car cup holders. Burgers are easy to eat in the car, they require no utensils.
NETS also found in their study, people playing the guitar, putting on make-up, drinking coffee and fighting with a passenger. They found one woman eating a bowl of cereal while driving. She ended up losing control of her vehicle and killing a 53 year-old woman.
My initial reaction to this was, “Hey, I do that.” I sometimes eat while I drive. I notice that I swerve a little when I’m concentrating on getting that last fry at the bottom of the McDonald’s bag. This topic caught my interest just because so many people do it. It seems that some people think they don’t have the time to eat at home. America is fast paced and people feel they need to keep up with it, so they rush. Eating distracts drivers to a point where it not only effect you, as the driver, but as well as others around you. Drivers are putting themselves as well as neighboring cars and pedestrians in danger. A type of rage can also come about from this, road rage.
What I found the most interesting about eating while driving has to do with women who binge and purge, all while driving. A study conducted by Dr. James Mitchell of the Neuropsychiatric Research Institute, show that of participants who suffer from an eating disorder, 73% of them admitted they have binged while driving and 16% of those said they also purged after binging. This study was the most interesting part of the research on eating while driving.
I think something needs to be done about eating while driving, as well as all the other distractions we have in our vehicles. General Motors is running 14 test cars that are equipped with adaptive cruise control. This device uses radar to detect how close the car is to another. The radar will automatically slow down the car. Camera and computers are also installed in the car. These well capture how the driver acts when the car slows down accordingly. I think this is a great device however, I think that preserving your life should be more important and more of a priority that we wouldn’t need these kinds of things to help us.
I think this information is very useful in that it brings attention to the dangers of eating while driving. It’s too bad that the use of cellular phones seems to be the only concern of distraction. Not everyone can own a cellular phone, but everyone can eat and that seems like it would be more of a danger, because that many more people are able to eat and drive than use a cell phone and drive.
I found all the information through Google. I typed in “eating while driving.” It was not a hard subject to research, though I did have to read thorough a lot of different articles. Again, the information on this topic is quite frightening and hopefully people will benefit from some of the facts.
References:
Car Concerns: Eating while driving hazardous to health.
By: Susan Frissell
June 16, 2002
Spilled Food a Hazard at the Wheel
By: James R. Healey
USA Today, April 28, 2002
Attention, drivers: Distractions cause 25% of accidents
By: Sara Nathan
USA Today, June 27, 2000
By: Amy Boerma
The Arizona Republic, October 8, 2002