{"id":153418,"date":"2026-01-28T15:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T15:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/153418\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T15:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T15:41:09","slug":"sacramento-parents-disrupt-and-discourage-youth-sports-officials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/153418\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacramento parents disrupt and discourage youth sports officials"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Abridged version:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Local youth sports officials are attracted to the action \u2014 they say they do it for the love of the game. Officiating helps bring them back to their childhood in a meaningful way.<\/p>\n

Refs and umps expect a fair amount of yelling from the stands, but when it becomes too much, there are consequences for parents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Local coaches play an important role, too, both blowing their own kind of whistle when needed and setting the tone for the families behind them.<\/p>\n

Local youth soccer referee Kris Zanardelli remembers exactly when he\u2019d had enough. It was August 2022, as he was working a game in Loomis with players 12 and under.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe parents were all over me,\u201d he recalled. \u201cIf I called something they didn\u2019t like, if I didn\u2019t call something they didn\u2019t like. I was done.\u201d<\/p>\n

He walked away from youth sports. For him, that meant shelving his whistle\u00a0for both recreational and competitive high school soccer.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t officiate another soccer game for nearly a year and a half.<\/p>\n

Zanderelli\u2019s experience is not unique. Referees and umpires in the Sacramento region face a fair amount of passionate protest from the sidelines and stands. It can make them question whether it\u2019s worth it. Aggressive behavior can also lead to consequences for spectators and add another responsibility for local coaches expected to keep their fans in line.<\/p>\n

Youth sports officials want to stay in the game<\/p>\n

Youth sports officials say they\u2019re not doing it for the money. (Soccer referees earn $25-$110 per match depending on position and the level of competition.) They\u2019re out there to stay in the game \u2014 to give back to the sports that shaped their own childhood decades ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t wake up early on a Saturday morning to go out to a local park and screw up a kid soccer match,\u201d Zanardelli said. \u201cNone of us do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"soccer\"Referees Kosh Grewal, Omar Mansour and Carlos Ledesma address team captains before a boys varsity soccer match between West Park and Pioneer high schools on Jan. 2, 2026. (Martin Christian)<\/p>\n

Like Zanardelli, Carlos Ledesma is a lifelong champion of soccer. Once a player himself, he now participates as a referee and referee assigner, which is the person who schedules the refs, for Roseville Soccer Club<\/a> and Loomis Soccer Club<\/a>. He works middle school and high school soccer as well. Both his kids played competitively when they were young athletes, and now that they are grown, officiating is his way of staying close to the action.<\/p>\n

Some fans lack self-control<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have those people that just don\u2019t have that self-control, and it doesn\u2019t matter if there are 12 cameras on them, they will still act that way, still be irresponsible,\u201d Ledesma said. He pointed to an incident just a few years ago in Roseville, when a soccer spectator ran onto the pitch and tackled the ref. All captured on camera, it caught the attention of the local news<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a coach, I\u2019ve definitely had my issues with referees,\u201d said West Sacramento soccer dad and assistant coach Justin Chechourka. This past season, he shared, Chechourka got a yellow card. In soccer, a yellow card is a formal warning from the officials \u2014 one more wrong move and you are out of the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Chechourka says drawing a yellow card as a coach, though, can be productive, helping the officials see something that needs more attention. \u201cPart of their job is to protect the kids,\u201d he explained. \u201cIf someone is coming in tackling with cleats up or playing dirty and it\u2019s going to hurt somebody, or maybe they\u2019re just playing so physical that things are starting to escalate, the referee\u2019s job is to temper what\u2019s happening on the field. They\u2019re the only ones who can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Youth sports officials will even pause the play until a coach can get the crowd under control, for the safety of everyone involved, but mostly for the safety of the players.<\/p>\n

\"Referee\"Carlos Ledesma referees a varsity soccer match between West Park and Pioneer high schools on Jan. 2, 2026. (Martin Christian)<\/p>\n

Coaches play key role in fan behavior<\/p>\n

Some youth leagues have written guidelines about fans. Roseville Soccer Club<\/a>, for example, lays out expectations on its website: \u201cPlease remember to model positive behavior at all practices and games. All families agreed to our spectator policy during registration, and we have zero tolerance for negative behavior toward coaches, players, or referees. Violations may result in removal from the program without refund.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, youth sports officials and coaches execute the behavior rules.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve kicked parents out who have been unruly. It\u2019s mostly through the coach,\u201d Ledesma said. \u201cI\u2019ve said, \u2018I\u2019m sorry, if that spectator is not removed from the field, I will not restart this game.\u2019 And I always bring it back to the kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYelling at the refs and the umpires \u2014 that\u2019s a time-old tradition. That\u2019s going to be part of the game,\u201d said Bob Wood, a longtime Sacramento youth baseball umpire who has been involved in local baseball \u2014 from player to parent to coach to umpire \u2014 for the better part of 50 years. \u201cWe do not care who wins the game,\u201d Wood added. \u201cWe want to get the call correctly, and we are going to do it to the best of our ability. And we are out there for the kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"YoungBob Wood, left, umpires a game at Pocket Little League\u2019s Bill Conlin Sports Complex between the Majors Padres and Cardinals in spring 2025. (Courtesy of Aaron Zaragoza)<\/p>\n

Let the players make decisions<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to let the players make the decisions,\u201d Ledesma said. \u201cThe best spectators are those who don\u2019t say \u2018go, go, go\u2019 all the time. For the most part, (the players) will make a decision and they\u2019ll commit it to muscle memory. Being a ref gives me the final perspective on how a parent or spectator should (behave).\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Something Checkourka said he\u2019s learned from years of coaching \u201cis that it\u2019s really the coaches who set the tone.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cFor the most part, if the coach isn\u2019t overreacting and isn\u2019t being absurd, the parents don\u2019t either. They follow the lead,\u201d said Chechourka, who admitted to watching his words more carefully after that yellow card. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe good experiences almost universally,\u201d Zanardelli said, \u201care when the losing team players, spectators or coaches say to me as a referee, \u2018That was a great game, ref, thank you.\u2019 The mind switch required for that is great because they wanted to win, and they didn\u2019t win.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, Ledesma said, \u201cwe all want to go home thinking that was a good game.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"YouthA referee makes a call during the youth rugby tournament at Cherry Island Sports Complex in Rio Linda on Jan. 24, 2026. (Cameron Clark)<\/p>\n

Carolyn Becker is a regular contributor covering youth sports for Abridged in Beyond the Bleachers. She\u2019s lived in Northern California most of her life and worked in journalism and communication in Sacramento for more than 25 years. She and her husband are raising two boys, both of whom play competitive baseball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Abridged version:\u00a0 Local youth sports officials are attracted to the action \u2014 they say they do it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[5592,121,123,122],"class_list":{"0":"post-153418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sacramento","8":"tag-feature","9":"tag-sacramento","10":"tag-sacramento-headlines","11":"tag-sacramento-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}