I got a call from a colleague last spring with an unusual request.
He has an 8-year-old son who plays rec soccer and baseball. We have chatted on occasion about the joys, and headaches, of youth sports.
There is one part of these games, in his eyes, that brings out particularly poor behavior in kids as well as adults. It creates an environment, he has seen, where a kid’s hat is knocked off, derisive comments are hurled and compliments are more robotic.
It’s the postgame handshake line.
My co-worker suggested I write that it should be banned.
He has seen the line become more than just an opportunity for an occasional gloat after a win. It has unraveled, he says, into a breeding ground for hate.
Maybe you agree. It can get chippy right after a game. I have seen 14-year-old kids tell my son’s team to ‘have a nice trip home’ in that line after beating them in a tournament. I have noticed coaches walk unemotionally through it themselves and even, on occasion, mouth off to kids.
But that line can be an opportunity, too. It can develop sportsmanship within our young athletes, help them process life’s ups and downs and allow us to see how we can be better examples for them. Perhaps we just need to reassess how we approach it.
Here are five ways young athletes – as well as their coaches and parents – can get the most out of the postgame handshake line.
Our kids’ behavior is a reflection of our behavior. Use the handshake line to look in the mirror.
Moms and dads are notorious for disputing sports rulings and outcomes related to their kids.
Just last weekend, I watched as a coach in a 16U baseball game needed to be forcibly restrained from going after an umpire. ‘You just cost us the game,’ he shouted to the ump, amid a flutter of name-calling and obscenities that all the spectators heard.
The coach was ejected before he even had a chance to reach the postgame handshake line.
‘I’ve had parents come up to me after a game and spit in my face for not playing their kid enough and what they perceived as enough,’ says Tony Snethen, a longtime baseball coach for his two sons.
Snethen is also the vice president of brand innovation for the Kansas City Royals and an executive producer of a 2023 documentary aimed at overbearing and unruly parent behavior at sports events. The film contains footage of parents brawling at kids’ games, spectacles we have seen go viral in a number of states.
‘It’s just gotten so bad,’ Snethen says. ‘You can drop a pin on a map and go to a complex and see it happen every single night.’
While we’re reacting in the heat of the moment, perhaps we don’t realize how closely our kids are watching us.
‘We forget we’re teaching them things, right?’ says Laurel Williams, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
She’s also a sports parent to a 12-year-old daughter. Williams says her biggest advice for parents is to imagine if someone had a camera on you while your kids are playing sports. Would you be happy with what you saw?
‘You have a short amount of time on some level to teach them before they launch into the world,’ Williams tells USA TODAY Sports. ‘And so what are you teaching them? Are you teaching them when you get mad, you yell at somebody and you go in their face and tell them they’re an idiot? OK, well don’t be surprised when (your kids) yell at your face later and tell you you’re an idiot. Because they learned it from you.’
At the next game, watch your son or daughter walk through the postgame handshake line. Does their behavior mirror how you act at games?
Have your kids shake the referee’s or umpire’s hand after the game. It’s a key move in their maturation as an athlete.
Handshake lines were actually barred for a few weeks this past winter in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador after a series of altercations that led to suspensions of hockey coaches and players. The ritual was reinstated a few weeks later but led to an examination of the youth sports culture across Canada. It’s a country where parents aggressively promote the sports success of their kids, sometimes at the expense of referees whom they feel stand in the way of it.
‘I have had several players from other teams (often the best player who I may have shut down defensively) pull their hand from me and refuse to shake,’ says Brian Gladman, a basketball coach from Vaughan, Ontario, whom I reached out to via social media. ‘It has happened three times this year. That’s just poor sportsmanship and poor parenting.
‘I always have my U10 guys line up right after the final buzzer. We are one of, if not the only, teams who also take the opportunity to thank the refs and scorer table with a fist bump. I think it’s important and shows character.’
It also shows you’re not blaming an easy target of abuse who, in the case of hockey or basketball, is watching 10 players at a time and won’t see everything. You’re accepting what has just happened, whether you won or lost, which is the ultimate lesson of sports.
‘As a longtime coach as well, the most passionate thing I teach (is) searching out and shaking the hand of the game officials,’ says Steve Buskard, who has refereed youth hockey for more than 16 seasons in Ontario. ‘The players that look you in the eye and thank you is the warmest gesture and restores your commitment to ref the kids. I’ve seen a couple parents actually chastise their kids for doing it but it’s the small few.’
The move can look instinctive if ingrained in a kid. Just watch a clip Greg Olsen, a retired NFL player-turned-youth sports advocate, showed on his podcast last year.
The moment the game-winning hit is delivered to right field, the losing catcher turns to the home-plate umpire and offers his hand.
‘To me, these are the moments that capture how special youth sports are and why they can be just the best vessel for raising adults in this world,’ Olsen said.
COACH STEVE: Greg Olsen offers suggestions for managing youth sports
Find a player or coach on the other team to compliment. Good competition helps you play your best.
When you shake the hands of your opponents, don’t look at the exercise as facing someone you have just beaten or who has beaten you.
Instead, think of shaking an opponent’s hand as an opportunity to congratulate them on how hard they tried to beat you.
J.P. Nerbun, an author and leadership coach who has extensively studied team culture, encourages players to single out one individual on the other side of the line they can affirm.
Great shooting today.
Your defense was fantastic; it was really hard to play against you.
As a coach, you can offer similar affirmations to kids or the other coach.
‘It all comes back to teaching kids that competition − truly competing, as the Latin word competō suggests − is to strive together,’ says Nerbun, who played basketball at South Carolina and has coached the sport at the high school level. He now coaches his school-aged kids.
‘True competition is two teams or individuals striving and pushing each other to their best,’ he says. ‘The handshake line is an opportunity to honor your competitor.’
Know that losing is a crucial element of your kid’s development
Sportsmanship can come to life in the handshake line. If we want to foster it there, we can encourage it in all of our kids’ actions: From when we are holding the door for someone to helping an opponent off the ground after a fall.
‘I see a lot more good sportsmanship than bad,’ says Asia Mape, a coach and mom who founded ‘I Love to Watch you Play,’ a website dedicated to enriching the parent-athlete dynamic. ‘I see players raise their hands to signal to a ref that they committed a foul without being asked. I’ve seen parents from opposing teams rushing to get ice and help when our athlete was injured. I’ve watched young spectator students offer up their front-row seats to elderly grandparents.’
The most prominent example in Paris came from gymnast Simone Biles, who, along with American teammate Jordan Chiles, bowed down to Olympic floor champion Rebeca Andrade on the medal stand when they fell short of gold.
Regardless of how she acts, Biles will go down as the best gymnast ever. But she made a choice to act in a certain way, and it is most likely how she will be remembered at these Olympics in which she won three gold medals.
Use the handshake line as an opportunity to handle adversity. It teaches our kids resilience.
How athletes conduct themselves can work the other way around, too. I took my older son to a baseball camp at a college in January where a recruiting specialist told a story about a prospect. This player had scouts lined up to see him one day, until they witnessed the tone in which he talked to his mother.
After the scouts watched how the kid berated her for bringing him the ‘wrong’ flavor of Gatorade, they all left.
The path to becoming a mature athlete can start early. In fact, it can start in that postgame line.
‘The handshake is an odd thing,’ says Buskard, the longtime referee and coach from Ontario. ‘The losing team wants nothing to do with it but it’s amazing how civil it always is. The kids start this when they’re 4 years old in learn-to-play and it becomes natural for them. I’ve seen the videos where things can go wrong but have never witnessed it.’
My colleague raised the subject of banning the handshake because of actions taken by opponents his kid faced. It’s frustrating when coaches can’t control their players, or choose not to do so.
But we can always set the tone for our own kids. It’s why all of the coaches I consulted for this column said ‘no’ to the ban.
Jeff Stengel, who coaches baseball on Long Island, New York, even sees value in the other team disrespecting you.
‘It will teach your boys to be bigger people and be able to take the crap that life throws at them,’ he said. ‘If I caught one of my kids gloating or disrespecting the opposing team, I would definitely have a word with them after the handshake. No doubt. Life deals lessons all the time and as coaches, fathers, mothers, figures of authority, we are here to guide them down the right path, not teach them to hide and not deal with it.’
Our kids can be more proactive than we think. Remember that baseball coach I mentioned who had to held back from charging the umpire?
It was his 16-year-old catcher who was restraining him.
Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for a high schooler and middle schooler. His column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.