Scary Scenarios
Are staff members fully prepared?
By John Engh
Photos: Nays
When you think about youth sports, the first vision might be of kids with big smiles running up and down a field chasing a soccer ball. Or, maybe you see parents in the stands at a basketball game cheering loudly when a boy or girl makes a free throw for the first time. Or, you see a group of children sitting under a huge tree and enjoying post-game snacks while listening to the coaches recap the game and handing out game balls. These are the sights and sounds we expect and work so hard to make happen in communities across America.
What sounds and sights do we not expect to hear? How about rapid gunfire coming from a parking lot and panicked children running to their parents for cover? That certainly isn’t what a youth-sports administrator expects, but sadly we know the possibility of this exact scenario is very real. The scene I described is from a recent event outside Minneapolis, Minn., where one of the coaches on the field was actually hit by a stray bullet that sent parents and children scrambling for cover.
Hearing this story and a number of other horrific, active-shooter scenarios, made me think of my worst coaching experience—and it came when I was coaching my own child’s T-ball team!
As the coaches lined up the 5- and 6-year-olds to do warm-up throws, I noticed that the opposing head coaches of the teams still on the field were yelling from the dugouts at each other. After a few minutes, calmer heads seemed to have prevailed, so we weren’t going to witness an ugly scene of two dads arguing over a meaningless (in the sense of competition) T-ball game. But after the inning ended, these two dads crossed paths. They were now face to face, and it was not looking good. All of a sudden, one of the dads yelled, “He has a gun in his car, and he just threatened me!”
I looked around and the only “authority” I saw was what looked to be an 18-year-old kid in an umpire uniform. I knew from experience with the league that staff members were always on-site in bright-green neon shirts, but I couldn’t see anyone at the time. For the next five minutes, there was pure bedlam, with moms yelling across the field at other moms and parents running onto the field to grab their children. The umpire ran right past me without saying a word. No one knew what to do, but at least the two men had been separated.
When something unexpected happens, there isn’t a quick solution. The umpire ran to find the field administrator. When the two officials returned, they were trying to decide whether to continue the game. Police had not been called because there wasn’t a policy in place to deal with this type of situation. Eventually, after a number of phone calls, the police were brought in to file a report. The coach who supposedly had the gun had left the facility and was eventually banned from the league. The remaining games that night had to be canceled and rescheduled.
As the years go by, the list of bad incidents that have never happened in the park and recreation world becomes smaller and smaller. Gun violence, unfortunately, has become a scenario that every youth-sports administrator must be ready to deal with.
Steven Smith, co-founder and president of Guardian Defense, spoke at our annual Youth Sports Congress a couple years ago. He talked about how to respond to an active shooter threat at either a practice or game:
1. Initiate a rapid response. During a crisis, the ability to respond quickly is often the difference in saving lives. “Calling 911 is very important to get your professional first responders there,” Smith says. “However, how the people who are in front of this problem respond is so important in keeping kids safe because law enforcement is going to be three to 10 minutes away.”
2. Make decisions based on facts. During an emergency, Smith recommends making fast decisions based upon what is known at the moment, not just assumptions. “When you freeze, you’re more of a target,” he says. “You need to be able to react and respond based on what you know.”
3. Learn lessons from tragic incidents. “Unfortunately, when tragedy happens, we have to go back and debrief it,” Smith says. Reach out to others who have dealt with these horrifying incidents and find out what measures you can employ to better prepare and protect all the participants in a program. Sadly, there are numerous examples within the past couple of years, such as an argument among parents at a youth football game in Texas where a mother and daughter were hospitalized with gunshot wounds; a coach was shot at a youth football game in New York involving 9- and 10-year-olds; in Tennessee, a parent shot a coach in front of a group of young players.
4. Do due diligence. Don’t become lackadaisical in planning and practicing for emergency situations, because, unfortunately, there are individuals lurking out there harboring bad intentions. “These assailants do their homework,” Smith says. “They’re very methodical and well-planned in their attacks. They’ve seen past incidents and past predecessors that they want to outdo.” So, make sure you are constantly reviewing and revising an emergency response plan—and be sure everyone involved in a program knows what to do during an emergency.
John Engh is executive director of the National Alliance for Youth Sports (NAYS) in West Palm Beach, Fla. He can be reached via email at jengh@nays.org. To join more than 3,000 communities by starting a NAYS Member Organization, visit www.nays.org, email nays@nays.org or call (800) 729-2057.