[Jarons]

Yesterday, my 10 year old son had the opportunity of a lifetime to this point in his life only to have it ruined by many adults. His Pop Warner football team was invited to go play in a college football stadium in Columbia, SC. What should have been a wonderful experience was taken away by the adults from both teams and the refs.
First, he played against a team that was allowed, possibly encouraged, to play dirty for the second week in a row. My son's opponents could not block the D-line. So after several plays for losses, they resorted to tackling our defense every play and other little cheap tactics. Even worse we had an officiating crew allow this blatant stuff to happen. The crew was so bad that a police officer working security apologized to our coaching staff for the officiating These actions by the refs caused my son's coaching staff lose their composure. The coaching staff were fighting with each other. Saddest thing is that this is a great coaching staff, they have same philosophy as me: play hard, have fun, play to win, play clean. One coach in particular had to leave the game. He is my son's favorite coach. This man is a Marine/MMA fighter who would kill for any kid that he felt that was done wrong regardless which team he played for. There is the parents from the other team on our side taunting our parents and our parents taunting them.
The cool thing about this whole situation, is that the kids on my son's team kept their composure unlike last week when my son picked a kid up and tried to put him through the ground and another kid on the team was ready to fight. I talked to my son after the game. He was totally oblivious of what happened off the field and with the coaching staff. He asked me several times why every one was so upset. He played hard clean game got a few tackles, a fumble recovery, nearly recovered 2 onsides kicks. So I guess it was my experience that was ruined this weekend. Yesterday was a sad reflection of adults in general a Pop Warner football game.
Sorry that you had to read my rant. I couldn't sleep and had to get this off my chest.