Our recent announcement of a new bench technical foul for off-court behaviors counter to our mission and values, warranted careful consideration and frankly, additional explanation. The following was shared in response to the fair and reasonable question of "Why would you punish the kids for parents actions?"

We will start by saying that we hope this will be a non-issue, but given the last few seasons and national attention being placed on the issue of declining officials and rising drop-out rates in youth sport, the SDCBL Board felt compelled to do something locally to help slow this unfortunate trend. 

It is important to know that this is not intended as a punishment to the kids as much as it is a deterrent to overzealous reaction and habitual bad behavior on the part of grown adults and parents who value winning over the values we try to teach as a league.  Put another way, it is more important for some, to win or be right about something than it is to show #character through grace and patience with mistake(s) game officials may make in the course of a game.

The prevailing thought is that if parents associate their own poor behaviors with a negative consequence for their team, they may (we hope) consider dialing it back and letting their players work through the inevitable missed call(s) with their team and their coach.  There are many life lessons to teach our kids about how to act in the face of adversity.  Blaming, or shaming others for misfortune or mistakes is not one of them.  Our mission includes providing our players with a ‘fair’ and ‘positive’ environment.  We would agree that this requires good officiating, parity in teams across the league, and positive, supporting behaviors.  As we articulated in the Mission and Values section of our website, that takes us all.  EVERYONE is responsible and accountable to our code of conduct and parents are no exception.  Now parents have skin in the game, literally. 

I hope we can partner in the wins, the losses, the good, bad, and ugly.  Sport is messy, it’s not always black and white and officials will miss calls, and sometimes, they will miss them in the worst ways but they are human and these are youth basketball games in a recreational league. It has become unsettling to our board members to witness how misguided energy is taking the fun out of these games for our players, our volunteers, and our officials.  I hope this in some way helps increase the collective understanding behind this move and while some may view it as the question was posed above, I hope we can all think more deeply about the spirit and intent of this new measure. 

We hope you and your player(s) have a positive experience this year and that you’ll partner with us in championing and modeling our mission and values.  Have a great season.