With summer at the doorstep and the proverbial thermostat turned up to maximum levels, Tennessee parents decided to pretty much ruin the lives of their softball-playing children by brawling in public.
Video recorded on a cell phone in Kingsport showed multiple people were involved. According to the Kingsport Times News, parents of girls on the East Wilkes Cardinals and Blue Ridge Explosion softball teams got heated on Saturday. Both teams were from out of town.
While no one was reported hurt or arrested, the softball teams paid a price. Due to the alleged actions of parents, they were kicked out of the tournament.
Kingsport’s Parks and Recreation Department athletic program coordinator Todd McLemore detailed what led up to the fight.
“The Cardinals had won a game prior to this fight and they were supposed to play the winner of Blue Ridge and (another team). Apparently some spectators were very vocal towards the umpire calls in favor of Blue Ridge and it just got louder and louder,” he said. After that, Blue Ridge parents confronted Cardinals parents. It escalated from there.
This is bad news for the teams because they’ve been kicked out of the tournament. It’s the worst news because they’ve been banned from participating in future tournaments as well.
“I’ve done this for 10 years and never once had a physical altercation. This was the first and hopefully the last,” Regional Director for USA Softball Tina Gale said. “We run a very clean organization, we run good tournaments, but unfortunately it happened on our dime and we don’t take things like this lightly. We would never condone that kind of conduct.”
[Image via Times News Online screengrab]
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