First Soccer Game of the Season- VENT!!

Okay, I don't usually do this in this blog, but this has been bugging me all day!! I want to start off by saying if you are this kind of parent, sorry if I offend you, but maybe this will make you realize how you sound to your kid!! Let me start off by saying that we live in a small town. Ross has been playing soccer here since he was 4 so I am no newbie to this. This season the youth sports association here did a horrible job advertising the fall season soccer sign-ups (we are talking a tiny sign at the entrance of each neighborhood that gave a website address you could hardly read which if you went home and looked it up told you that the sign-ups were this one Saturday for 2 hours. In other words they did not get very many kids signed up this season). The only reason why I figured it out is that since I had been signing him up for so many years I knew around the time that they had sign-ups so I was checking out every sign in town so he would not miss out! Since they had so few kids Ross was put on a coed team with kids ages 8 to 11 turning 12. Some of the kids are quite larger than Ross, and some are really good, but most are probably on his level. I would have to say that none of these kids are good enough to play professionaly one day, and maybe one or two could possibly get a college scholarship out of it, MAYBE. So in other words, this should be fun for the kids and a way to get some exercise and learn how to work together as a team. The kids seem to get that, the coach gets that, why don't the PARENTS get that?? So we go to the first game of the season today, the team we are playing against is HUGE because they are all 6th graders and from a larger town. They cream us 6-0. Who cares as long as the kids have fun in my opinion. I was saddened by the parent's attitudes! They screamed at their kids from the side of the field, barking out instructions like they knew what they were talking about (hello, are you the coach?? Uh, no!), acting like this was the end of the world, mumbling about how their kids were going to be out practicing every night this week since they were playing lousy, etc. I heard few words of encouragement spoken by any parents, luckily the coach had great things to say at the end of the game to hopefully offset some of the comments coming from the parents. I feel sorry for the kids, this should be fun!! I guess the one positive is that it shows me how I don't want to be to my kids from the sidelines and helps me to make sure that Ross is having fun and to show him that we love him no matter how well he played. This is going to be a long season if I have to listen to this every game. Unfortunately this has only gotten worse as the kids get older, I guess parents feel like it is fine for them to play for fun when they are younger, but since they are a whopping 9 or 10 now we need to get serious. Give me a break.