Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 26, 1993 TAG: 9302260119
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
GROWN-UP HASSLES RUIN CHILD'S PLAY
Wednesday was to have been the night that the Inner City Hawks and the Northwest Silver resumed their rivalry on the basketball court. The players are 11- and 12-year-olds and both teams had cruised through Roanoke's regular season with stellar records. The teams may well meet again in the league championship next week.But Wednesday's game never happened. The Hawks and the Silver, and other teams in the city, have trouble finishing - or even starting - their games.
Parents and referees and coaches have misspent so much of their energy yelling at and threatening one another that the boys don't get much time to actually play basketball.
Some say that, at its core, racial strife underlies this sad season. Teams are organized by neighborhoods, and Roanoke's neighborhoods are as stratified by race and by wealth as much as any city's, anywhere. The teams reflect the demographics. Soccer teams from whiter Southwest Roanoke dominate play on their fields; basketball teams from blacker Northwest Roanoke dominate on their courts.
Others dismiss the racial charge as bunk and insist that parents who take youth sports - and winning - too seriously are at fault, regardless of their color.
Whomever you choose to tag as the culprit, the boys who want to shoot hoops in a warm gym are the losers.
The Hawks and the Silver tried to play on Feb. 4 at William Ruffner Middle School. The game ended prematurely when a referee, fearing for his safety, suspended play.
Police have been called to restore order at games; fistfights have erupted; coaches and players have been suspended; some fans have been asked to leave gyms at Ruffner and Breckenridge, Jackson Park and Woodrow Wilson middle schools.
As recently as last week, the league's beleaguered administrators considered ending the season immediately, forgoing the few remaining regular season games and canceling the playoffs and championships. It didn't happen.
"They felt like we could finish the season without someone dying in a gym," said Ruth Wilkinson, who oversees youth recreation for the city.
It's a modest hope.
Still, Wednesday night's game was abruptly canceled. Instead of the opening tipoff at 8 p.m., custodians were turning off the gym lights at Breckenridge.
"We just felt like we didn't need to risk it," Wilkinson said the next morning. She was going to referee the game herself with a co-worker to defuse any problems - and because eight of the 20 refs who started the season working games between the boys have quit.
Referees earn only about $10 a game, most of them work jobs during the day and slip into the black and white stripes by night. If they want after-hours violence, they can "lay at home in front of the TV with some peanuts and a beer," said one ref who hung up his whistle.
He's scared to let his name be used.
But he refereed a game last week at Woodrow Wilson when one coach started riding him about his calls.
The ref is white. Both teams were made up of black players, coached by black coaches.
"I told him to leave the gym when he started getting really abusive," said the ref. "He started taking off his coat, saying he was going to take me out. He wouldn't leave and I called the game."
The police arrived. Parents accused the ref of being unfair to the kids for calling the game.
"As I was leaving, one lady said to me, `You're pitiful, ref.' And her team was winning by 40 points!" he said.
"I've played sports all my life, been a referee in the city for nine years," he said. "I've never seen anything like it, and it's getting worse." He's ejected white and black parents and coaches from gyms.
After one game this season, a woman called to complain that a ref was picking on black players. The ref of that game was black. She hung up.
Among such young players, referees take liberties they wouldn't dare seize among high schoolers. They try to keep games moving by ignoring some penalties when it's obvious some of the kids don't understand the rules. Nine-year-old boys want to run and jump and shoot. They don't want to hear whistles all night.
Many parents and some coaches don't buy that philosophy.
And the lessons never are lost on the boys on the court. They're kids, and they soak it all up.
Our adult buffoonery and our misplaced priorities guarantee that our diseased approach to sports - lost forever as pure recreation - is passed on to our young.