After nearly seven years, it looks like the nightmare that Nick Lyon and others have been facing as a result of the politically motivated prosecution by AG Nessel in the Flint Water Crisis is finally coming to an end. Per the Detroit News, Genesee County Circuit Judge Elizabeth Kelly on Tuesday dismissed felony charges against seven state officials charged in relation to the Flint water crisis.
The dismissal eliminates charges based on a Michigan Supreme Court ruling in June that the one-man grand jury used to charge the defendants was unconstitutional. As a result of that decision, the indictments issued against six defendants are “invalid” and the charging process “void,” Kelly wrote.
The order applies to charges against former state health director Nick Lyon; former state medical executive Eden Wells; former Gov. Rick Snyder’s advisor Richard Baird and communications director Jarrod Agen; former Flint emergency managers Gerald Ambrose and Darnell Earley and state health department employee Nancy Peeler.
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Today there were two articles about the shortage of youth sports officials and how the poor behavior of parents is the major contributor to the shortage. I will share excerpts from each of the articles.
From Nolan Bianchi of the Detroit News.
The Michigan High School Athletic Association has caught itself in a vicious cycle.
It’s no secret that registration numbers for high school game officials — across nearly all sports — have been down for some time. The rate of retention, specifically, is dropping exponentially and represents a critical area of concern. “We have a lot of officials who, after their first or second years, just decide to be done,” MHSAA spokesperson Geoff Kimmerly said. “The biggest reason we receive on this is behavior by adult fans, adult spectators.”
In that sense, MHSAA is fighting a war on two fronts. It is struggling to replace the demographic of officials that is easing into retirement and have stepped back a bit due to COVID, in addition to those who only had a year or two on the job.
Between 2012-2021, the total number of high school officials has dropped 28.1%, from 17,751 to 12,759. Players, coaches, parents — they all have a sense of normalcy at stake if the official shortage isn’t turned around. “There are enough people now who have had the teams that they follow have games moved to different days because they don’t have officials available for that night,” Kimmerly said. “And then it becomes a question of, ‘Well, why don’t we have more officials?’ “And then we can explain, ‘We just need more people and we need to treat people we have better.’
But fan behavior continues to rear its ugly head, and nearly everybody interviewed for this story said coaches can play a hand in slowing down that trend. Nobody blamed coaches for the conduct of fans; however, after decades of combined experience, they all saw the power that coach wields.
“I think it all has to do with the head coach of the team,” Tom Burrell, a long time sports official said. Vigus, a former high school football coach himself, concurs: “I think more coaches could set better examples. If your coach is yelling, it gets contagious to players and fans.”
And this from Bridge Magazine.
A mother with two sons in the football camp had heard secondhand that a coach had yelled instructions at her son. After swearing and threatening people on the sidelines, she called family members on her cell phone to demand they get themselves to the park and assault the coach. Roby ended up refunding the enraged woman her money and removing her and her sons from the program.
It’s far from an isolated incident: Coaches and referees across the country increasingly confront verbal and even physical assaults from parents. A 2017 survey by the National Association of Sports Officials found that 87 percent of the participants had suffered verbal abuse, 13 percent reported being assaulted, and 47 percent said they felt unsafe. Parents have also attacked each other, youth referees, and even players, including tripping teens on the field, shining a laser into a player’s eyes or knocking them over. Racist catcalls, taunts and insults against teams of color from parents are also all too common.
Last fall, the father of a player in Vail, Colorado, sprayed a youth hockey coach in the face with Lysol. The mother of a player in Laurel, Mississippi, ambushed the umpire of a softball game for 12 year olds at a parking lot after a game this April and gave her a black eye. And in August 2022, popular football coach Mike Hickmon of Texas was shot and killed – in front of horrified children – after a game for nine-year-olds during an argument over the score. Small wonder that 80 percent of all new high school sports officials in the U.S. leave the field after two years, according to a recent study by the National Federation of State High School Associations.
“It is so bad with parents threatening and wanting to fight officials that we have a shortage of referees now,” Roby said. In fact, despite pay increases, there’s a nationwide shortage of youth sport referees this fall – something that experts attribute largely to a rise in ugly, embarrassing and sometimes violent behavior by sports parents.
As a result, what are supposed to be fun sporting events for youth athletes are often ruined by out-of-control parents stealing their children’s shine. It’s ironic, because youth sports can be one of the positive childhood experiences (PCEs) that help protect kids against the potential lifelong effects of childhood trauma and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), according to recent research.
Unfortunately, kids in the U.S. are quitting youth sports in droves, with nearly 70 percent dropping out before age 13 “because it’s just not fun anymore.” This trend, experts say, is largely due to too much pressure and the growing number of overzealous sports parents screaming insults at coaches and kids from the sidelines. In addition, relentless competition, year-round training, pressure to be number one and injuries are taking their toll. Instead of improving kids’ mental health, being on a sports team in these circumstances can actually be risky, with some young players reporting burnout, depression, anxiety and even suicidal thinking.
“Parents tend to try to coach from the sidelines and that frustrates their kid,” Michael Noble, the owner and founder of Noble Strong Training in Grand Rapids, Michigan, told MindSite News. Noble, who works with young athletes to take their game to the next level, said overinvested parents often overlook their children’s progress because they’re too focused on comparing them to their peers. Although the odds of any child becoming a professional athlete are tiny, observers say it’s common for ambitious parents paying $20,000 for their kid’s elite sports program to threaten coaches or rage over scores or penalty kicks – behavior that in a few cases appears to have trickled down to players.
The growing pivot to private coaching, uniforms, and elite travel teams has also left many families in the dust: Low-income kids and even middle-class kids and teens are ditching youth sports at disproportionately high rates because their families cannot find community-based recreational leagues or afford to keep them on elite teams, according to the nonprofit Aspen Institute’s initiative called Project Play.
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Elections Matter. Pray for peace and tolerance. What are you doing to stop the violence and mass killings?
Quote of the Day: “The prosecution has resorted to misleading and unfounded public statements about the case indicating it may file charges – for a third time. There was no basis in 2017 to charge Director Lyon, no basis in 2021 to charge him again, and there is no basis today. This misuse of the criminal justice system has to stop.” Nick Lyon’s attorney Chip Chamberlain.
Orchid of the Day: Aaron Judge for hitting homerun number 62 tonight, breaking Roger Maris’ American League record.
Onion of the Day: Those parents whose behavior is contributing to the shortage of youth sports officials.
Question of the Day: Should AG Nessel be subject to civil suits for her political prosecution of Nick Lyon and other in the Flint Water crisis?
Video/Image of the Day: See above