Ball 5

Author: Justin Goldenbock

On Monday, a jury in Canton, Texas found Jeff Doyal Robertson guilty of shooting his son's high school football coach. Gary Joe Kinne, who survived the attack after weeks in critical condition and is now a coach at Baylor University, testified that he found Robertson waiting outside the team dressing room before his attacker casually raised his gun and shot him across the dressing room and up against the back wall. Robertson was convicted of "aggravated assault with a deadly weapon," a charge which carries a sentence of two-20 years, though Robertson may find himself on the low end of that sentence.

The lightness of the charge shocked me. The initial charge, "aggravated assault on a public servant," carried with it a life sentence. After all, if not for the toughness and resilience of Kinne, a former standout linebacker at Baylor, Robertson would have faced first-degree murder charges. Turns out, Robertson's son, a freshman, plays behind Kinne's son. Go figure.

Despite a stereotype that I occasionally propagate, the insanity and occasional violence of the sports parent scene is not limited to our friends south of the M-D line. Robertson's recent conviction reminded me of an event that occurred, for me, much closer to home. In Jan. 2002, Thomas Hunta of Reading, Mass., was convicted of "involuntary manslaughter" when he beat his son's hockey coach to death after a practice that Hunta described as overly violent (the irony is overwhelming and, frankly, depressing). Prosecutors pointed out that not only did Junta initiate a fight, not only did he have a 125 lb. weight advantage over his combatant, but that it's difficult to argue the need to pin a man down and repeatedly batter his temples as self-defense. Amazingly, he was convicted but only sentenced to six years.

The gravity of these crimes raises them above the mundane competitive conflicts that we are accustomed to in the youth sports scene. Everyone's been to a Little League, CYO basketball or Bantam Hockey game with a parent who got a little out of hand, whether it actually involved physical confrontation, or merely an acceptable amount of verbal abuse.

Personally, I've seen both, and I've found the verbal abuse the more disturbing, despite having witnessed a 25-year coaching veteran go after a 16-year-old umpire at a Little League game. He got a one-year ban from coaching. Coaches, parents, referees…what if these same targets were policemen. "Sorry, your honor, I accidentally beat to death a policeman half my size for arresting my son for drinking…" There's something about the competitive psyche of sports that somehow excuses, or at least tolerates, that extra bit of violence that corrupts games that are meant to be fun. How does Jeff Doyal Robertson potentially find himself a free man by the time my 18-year-old brother graduates college? For the same reasons the Canadian Olympic Hockey Team put Todd Bertuzzi on its front line.