My favorite moment from the four-game soccer tournament in Savannah this past weekend was when one of the kids on my son’s team got a yellow card for yelling “Shut up!” during one of the games.

But the referee withdrew the yellow card (something rarely seen in soccer) when he found out who the kid was yelling at. It turns out, the kid was yelling at his own dad.

There’s comedy.

I know for a fact that the referees would frequently like to yell “Shut up!” at the parents, too. I have found that parents at their children’s sporting events are often more animated than the fans of professional or college teams.

We’ve all become experts in the game from watching our kids over the years. From the sidelines, we are certain we have a better vantage point than the refs. For instance, when one of the boys on Harrison’s team got a yellow card for a slide tackle, I had a great view of it and I know that he got the ball (who cares if he came in with his cleats up?). So I yelled with the other parents at the referee whose glasses prescription was clearly expired. And when that kid elbowed my son in the back, I knew that it should have been a red card, not just a free kick, so I yelled at the referee with the other parents.

I may not have gone through the same training as the referees, but I’ve watched a lot of games and I know a clean slide tackle from a dirty elbow.

With our children as the athletes on the field, we’re emotionally invested. Our love for our children drives us to want to see them do well. Better than anyone, we know what hard work they’ve put into the practices; we know how important the game is to them; we know how frustrated they get when they lose.

And they’re our kids.

If you do not have children, you cannot understand what motivates the sideline parent to scream and cheer and yell encouragements. And our children, who would prefer that we leave them alone and let them play (and, truth be told, would probably prefer we stay at home if it weren’t for the fact they need a ride to the field) can not understand what motivates us.

“You’ll understand one day when you have kids,” I tell Harrison, and I leave it at that because he’s now 15-years-old and 15-year-old boys do not want to hear their fathers go into detail about a father’s love of his child.

But as parents, we’ve also paid small fortunes for our children to play.

Last season, Harrison’s team struggled with a bunch of draws. One of the complaints about soccer you hear from people is that games sometimes conclude level and there’s not a winner or a loser. People want their team to win, not tie.

Before one of the games, I was teasing Harrison and a couple of the guys on his team. “I’m not paying all this money to see you guys tie. You need to win today,” I told them.

I was joking, but you’d like to see some reward for your financial investment in the way of a winning season. And when you spend a large fortune on a tournament that includes a two-night stay in a hotel in downtown Savannah (like we did this weekend) you definitely want to come away from the weekend with some victories.

Anyone who donates to UGA for season tickets can understand what I’m talking about. We pony up the money, we expect to see some victories.

So we shout encouragement from the sidelines.

A couple of years ago one of Harrison’s coaches told the parents he didn’t want us coaching from the sidelines because he wanted the kids to start making their own decisions on the field. He didn’t add that the parents don’t know what they’re talking about and often advise their children poorly from the sidelines, but we all knew that was part of what he meant.

I wasn’t present at that meeting and so I continued to shout instructions to Harrison and his teammates. “Score a goal!” I would yell. “Pass the ball!” I would yell. Those are good ideas in soccer and the kids would do well to pay attention to me.

As parents, we are accustomed to telling our children what to do. Children are often brainless, especially teenaged children, and it is right and necessary that their parents shout instructions to them at all times – whether they are playing soccer or studying math or horsing around with their friends. If teenagers do not have their parents constantly shouting instructions at them, they are bound to make some extraordinary mistake that will end disastrously.

So we shout instructions from the sidelines.

I also play soccer in an adult league, and I play soccer poorly. As a poor soccer player, I am accustomed to having my teammates shout instructions from the sidelines. I can tell you for a fact, every player on the field – whether it’s U15 soccer or Atlanta Braves baseball or the Super Bowl on Sunday – when they hear people on the sidelines shouting instructions what the athletes really want to do is wheel around and yell, “Shut up!”

When you’re on the field playing and there are a dozen distractions, you don’t want to hear from your parents or your teammates or anyone else on the sidelines.

It wasn’t Harrison who got the yellow card for shouting at his father this weekend, but it could have been.

I swear I try.

I know it frustrates him. I know it makes him angry. I know he doesn’t want me shouting from the sidelines. And so I bite my tongue. I walk away from the game. I press my lips so tight together that it is giving me wrinkles in the corners of my mouth.

I try so hard.

But I can’t help myself. “Push up!” I inevitably yell. “Pinch in!” I inevitably yell. “Get goal side of him!”

And Harrison comes off the field refusing to speak to me because I couldn’t just keep my mouth shut. But that’s okay – he’s a teenage boy, and he wouldn’t be speaking to me anyway.

I coached all three of my sons in soccer at some point over the years. I take credit for their successes and am quick to note that “I taught them better than that” when they make mistakes.

And as their former coach, it is impossible for me to shut that off.

During one of Nathan’s recent games, I was offering advice (or shouting, whatever) and Nate turned and looked directly at me, and like a traffic cop calling a driver to a stop he put his hand up and glared directly at me.

Some of the other parents laughed at that in the same way that the parents this weekend laughed when the kid on Harrison’s team got a yellow card for yelling at his dad. But if you think his dad or I stopped shouting instructions and yelling encouragement you’re dead wrong.

Sideline parents are the most emotionally and financially invested former coach fans anywhere, and nothing will shut us up, so our teenagers should just deal with it and ignore us like they do with everything else.

Rob Peecher is editor of The Oconee Leader, but on Saturdays he shouts himself hoarse at his sons’ soccer games.

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