Youth sports should be for the kids, but too often we’ve witnessed adults trying to live through their children and/or mar the game by the embarrassing and sometimes deadly antics.
We’ve seen it in everything from football and basketball to hockey and baseball.
We witnessed it last year in Texas with Aqib and Yaqub Talib where a youth football coach was shot and killed, and the latter Talib brother now faces 37 years in jail. This rash of violence in youth sports has resulted in a significant decline in officials and referees, with 50,000 stepping down from these positions since 2018.
Unfortunately, another incident transpired this past week when a youth football coach in St. Louis was shot by an angry parent during a practice.
The coach, Shaquille Latimore, was confronted by the parent, Daryl Clemmons, weeks prior as Clemmons was unhappy with his son’s playing time. Then this past week, according to the police report, Clemmons resorted to violence and shot Latimore, a volunteer assistant coach with the St. Louis BadBoyz team, four times in front of the 9 and 10-year-old players.
After the shooting, Clemmons turned himself into authorities and was charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action.
Latimore survived the shooting and was recently discharged from the hospital, a place he should never have been in.
“Doctor said maybe a half inch to the left, I wouldn’t have been able to walk again; I’d be paralyzed,” said Latimore to KMOV4 TV.
Because of the incident, the city’s recreation department canceled the team’s season, so they won’t be going to the playoffs.
“After a series of incidents perpetuated by adults which culminated in Tuesday’s shooting, the Recreation Division decided to suspend the team’s participation in the CityRec Legends Football league. League rules are in place to ensure the protection of our youth participants, ages 5 to 13, and we will continue to uphold the rules to ensure this football season is safe and successful,” wrote the recreation department in a statement to KMOV4.
So now an entire team of children, who already had their lives impacted by witnessing their coach being shot, gets punished again by having their season ended.
And now a son will most likely be visiting his father in prison for years to come all because of a foolish decision.
“It’s crazy how they ended our season because of one person,” said ten-year-old player Antonio Gray.
And while we’d love to believe that this is a lesson other parents should learn from, from what we continue to witness, we highly doubt it.
