The 13 Worst Parents in Youth Sports History

14.

Like a lot of you, I grew up playing youth sports. And in that time I learned valuable lessons in teamwork, perseverance, and whatever third quality everyone talks about. But slowly, as the years went by, I lost a lot of respect for a lot of adults. In my comparatively tame adolescence (at least, compared to this list) I saw seemingly normal grown men berate teenage officials, annihilate water coolers, and threaten violence.

Early on, I think I was actually one of the more understanding kids, because I used to chalk up inevitable outbursts to the stresses of adulthood. My inner-rationalizations for terrible behavior usually centered around the weight of an unfulfilling career, an overwhelming mortgage, erectile dysfunction, or a combination of all three. These problems, in-turn, resulted in the occasional referee getting lit up. These people aren’t horrible, I thought, they’re just having bad days. Now, as an adult, I’ve come to an obvious realization: some people are just dicks. Today we’ve combed through a collection of 13 such dicks, with a mix of both coaches and parents who have used youth sports as their rage outlet, almost certainly scarring their children for life in the process.

Honestly, therewere a ton of these degenerates. Narrowing them down to 13 was far from easy. Simply Google: (blank) sport, followed by: dad (or mom) arrested, and you'll see just how many hundreds thousands hundreds of thousands of results turn up, with a range of crimes that vary from assaults to (the occasional) murder. To truly whittle this list to a mere 13 examples, I tried to focus on uniquely insane stories. Hopefully these fit the bill but, if you personally have any good stories, feel free to send them to our tips email (link below).

For now these sufficiently outrageous stories will do. Here are the 13 Worst Parents in Youth Sports History.

Send all complaints, compliments, tips and stories to sportstips@complex.com

13.Irate dad bites part of coach's ear off.

Year: 2012

Name: Timothy Lee Forbes

Sport: Basketball

Of the many stories that were combed through, this is the only one that featured a parent biting off a coach's ear. That's precisely the type of act that can ensure your place in our Hall of Monumental Asswipes. The catalyst for this act of wannabe cannibalism was about as basic as it gets—Timothy Lee Forbes' sons lost their sixth grade Catholic League basketball championship. There's a couple of ways Forbes could've approached the situation, for example, many parents in the past have explained on the car ride home that accepting failure is part of life but simply making it to the championship is an accomplishment in and of itself.

Forbes instead went with an underutilized second option and sucker punched winning coach Jose Feliciano before biting a solid chunk of his ear off. Feliciano then celebrated his title in an emergency room desperately trying to get two-fifths of his ear back. Unfortunately it was to no avail as later, at Forbes' trial, the plastic surgeon testified that two inches of Feliciano's ear was missing, so in order to make the coach appear (close to) normal the surgeon had to pull a reverse-Dumbo and reduce the entire size of the severely wounded ear. That means somewhere out there is a man with two radically different sized ears because he coached a winning basketball team. Forbes was later sentenced to four years in prison.

12.Former big league pitcher lives up to his nickname.

Name: Mitch Williams

Year: (At least) 2008-14

Sport: Baseball, Girls Basketball

Odds are that if you've heard of Mitch Williams at all, you know him either for his nickname (Wild Thing), or for serving up Joe Carter's walk-off home-run in the 1993 World Series. Despite that stain on an otherwise great decent career, Mitch's status as a fan favorite in Philadelphia gave him a chance to stay within the game as a broadcaster after his playing days ended. When MLB Network hit the airwaves in 2009, Williams was one of their inaugural analysts, a cushy gig he ruined with his conduct at a 10-year-old's baseball tournament last summer.

According to Deadspin (whom he's currently suing), Williams' years of retirement did nothing to make him wise and reflective. He instead appeared even more intense, possibly calling an ump a "motherfucker," continuously arguing calls, reportedly calling a kid a "pussy" (leading a player to later ask his parent what that was) and allegedly telling one of his players to peg the opposing pitcher. Previously, Mitch had been tossed from his 10-year-old daughter's basketball game for dropping several F-bombs on a female ref. This conduct caused the organization providing the refs to boycott any games where Williams would be in attendance.

11.A dentist turns his son into a gridiron weapon.

Name: Dr. Stephen Cito

When: 1996

Sport: High School Football

When you're doing your best to win, sometimes it's in your best interest to pull out all the stops. Sane people call this "cheating." Complete assholes call it "gamesmanship." Jerry Rice used stickum, Ray Lewis used deer antler spray, and Dr. Stephen Cito (emphasis on "doctor") sharpened his son's chin-strap in an effort to literally slash the competition. After one two three four five kids left a single game due to lacerations (with one later going to the hospital for a dozen stitches), officials stopped the action to investigate, and found out the young Cito's helmet was "sharp enough to shred a magazine cover." For failing to stop his crazy dad, the younger Cito was expelled from his high school. For being a crazy dad, Cito was given a weekend in prison, a year on probation and 400 hours of community service. Afterward he was free to resume his life as a children's dentist.

10.Ex-con turned assistant coach slaps ref over bad call.

Name: Dion Robinson

Year: 2012

Sport: Pee-Wee Football

If you answered "Yes" to the question "Can you make it to two practices and one game a week?" Then congrats, you just passed the background check to coach Little League football in West Park, Fla. How else can you explain the case of Dion Robinson, a recidivist felon with a rap sheet that included assault with a firearm, cocaine distribution, and indecent exposure? Having him on the sidelines seems like a bad idea both in hindsight and upon immediately hearing it for the first time. In a 2012 game that powder keg exploded after an unsportsmanlike penalty, Robinson ran across the field and slapped the ref. His actions led to a temporary suspension of the entire league, kids included.

9.A dad's attempt to poison his son's teammate somehow goes awry.

Name: Jerome Breland

Year: 2000

Sport: Football

Sick of his son being bullied by a 12-year-old teammate, Jerome Breland did what any parent would do—he poisoned him. Breland did so by adding ipecac to a water bottle and then encouraged his son to give it to the troublesome colleague at practice (Note: this is the same stuff that killed the female half of The Carpenters). If his plan went off without a hitch, Breland would've induced vomiting in said teammate. If it went off with a hitch, Breland would've accidentally killed a kid. Some of you may ask if that risk was worth the reward, but clearly Breland thought it was. And his opinion is the only one that matters.

At first the plan was a rousing success, as the dopey kid naively drank from the bottle without even beginning to suspect somebody's father had poisoned it. But not long after, other kids on the team began drinking from the same bottle. It reads like a twist in a sitcom but was, in actuality, a crime turning more serious every time the drink switched hands. At that point practice had to be canceled, because it's hard to keep going when eight of your players are being frantically rushed to the hospital. It didn't take long to figure out what Breland had done because obviously the guy's not exactly a criminal mastermind. His sentence was six months house arrest and a year of community service.

8.A cop pays a Little Leaguer to peg another Little Leaguer.

Name: Shawn Patrick Phillips

Year: 1999

Sport: Baseball

One thing about sports that's always been sort of perplexing is how professional baseball players can just intentionally drill each other with a 100 MPH fastball without facing any sort of legal repercussions. Pennsylvania police officer Shawn Patrick Phillips somehow managed to find a way to get charged with assault for it. How? He put a child on the receiving end.

In 1999, Phillips (whilst on duty) approached a 10-year-old on his elementary school grounds, offering him two dollars to bean another 10-year-old. Since two dollars is a lot of to a 10-year-old, the kid of course did it. As a man with integrity, Phillips returned to the school four days later to fulfill his side of the business transaction and ponied up the dough. He then got caught when he was ratted out by a janitor he told for some reason. Perhaps the janitor was alarmed by a grown man soliciting a kid on school grounds. Continuing to use the type of judgment that landed him in the situation in the first place (i.e. the incredibly shitty type), Phillips rejected a plea deal that would've let him off with probation and instead got a sentence of three to 23 months.

7.Hockey coach trips opponent in post-game handshake line.

Name: Martin Tremblay

Year: 2012

Sport: Hockey

Anybody who has ever played a youth sport has some sort of experience with the handshake line. Sure, for the past two hours you've done whatever you can to beat your competition, but when the game ends you see it for what it is, a game. And afterward you congratulate your former foes on a job well done. These are the lessons in sportsmanship you can count on volunteer adults to teach you. Later in life you can pass this knowledge on to your own son, or nephew, or kid at a supermarket before his frightened mother pulls him away.

That is, unless your coach was (or was like) Martin Tremblay, a Vancouver hockey instructor who upended the sacred line by tripping (and breaking the wrist of) an opposing 13-year-old player. To make matters worse, the player Tremblay intended to trip also inadvertently sent a kid he didn't intend to trip to the ice. This, in turn, led to two charges of assault. Afterward, Tremblay said he tripped, apparently unaware that some people will record even the most mundane of life's events. It took a very brief time for the Canadian court systems to call bullshit with the judge sentencing Tremblay to 15 days in jail. On top of that, in the words of Tremblay's lawyer, the trip caused the breakdown of Martin's marriage, and the loss of numerous contracts for his construction business. Apparently assaulting a kid can lead to a hit to one's reputation as well.

6.A man obsesses over an opposing coach.

Name: Robert Sanfilippo

Year: 2012

Sport: Baseball

Unhappy that his son wasn’t succeeding in the dog-eat-dog world of preteen baseball, Robert Sanfilippo pulled his son off his traveling team (the Long Island Infernos) in order to play for the aptly named Long Island Vengeance. In order to field the best 10-year-old team money could buy, Sanfilippo posted $50,000 of his own money to build a team around his son. Then, as if no one was yet convinced he was unhinged, Sanfilippo began sending harassing messages from an untraceable phone to the Infernos’ coach John Reardon. Not sufficiently satisfied with texting, Sanfilippo upped the ante and began taking pictures of Reardon’s house, son, and wife. Still not satisfied, Sanfilippo texted Reardon saying he was going to pick his son up at school. At that point Reardon began to think of who would do this and came up with one culprit.

Sanfilippo was arrested for stalking and (possibly) for copyright infringement after basically stealing the plot of Little Giants.

5.Dad gives daughter's team advantage by shining a laser pointer into an opposing goalie's eyes.

Name: Joseph Cordes

Year: 2012

Sport: Hockey

Every responsible laser pointer owner knows that the cardinal rule is: Don't shine it in somebody's eye. Seriously, that shit isn't cool. Needless to say, Joseph Cordes is not a responsible laser pointer owner. The high school hockey dad used his laser pointer to harm, instead of using it for...whatever the hell laser pointers are actually for. In the midst of a heated 1-1 playoff tie, Cordes knew he had to do whatever he could to give his daughter's team the edge. His solution? The pointer, which turned out to be a little pocket Gordie Howe as his daughter's team won 3-1. Incensed for some reason, the opposing team's fans protested the win, but the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association overruled it on the grounds of, "Shut the fuck up, you lost." Cordes later apologized for humiliating his daughter, even though he had apparently also done it the year before.

4.A mom uses her rack to distract an opposing team's parents.

Name: Unknown

Year: 2004

Sport: Hockey

Honestly, your mom (hypothetically) baring her titties for all to see is not as bad as your mom (hypothetically) banging your teammates, but that's apparently more common then you'd think so, in staying true to our intro, we went with a story we found more unique. Instead, we focus on an enraged Toronto hockey mom who flashed an opposing team and their parents in order to save her son from the embarrassment of losing. Let that sentence wash over you for a second. She was discovered when the other teams' parents mothers complained. For whatever reason, the fathers didn't care. Her ingenious ploy did not work insofar as it got her banned from attending any league games for a year. But it did work insofar as her son's team won, 4-0. Still, when a bunch of 11-year-olds got a glimpse of a rival's moms boobies, who really walked away the victor that day?

3.Rich guy buys (and then ruins) an entire football league so his son can play every snap on defense.

Name: Dan Hinkle

Year: 2006

Sport: Football

Believe it or not, there are actually commissioners out there who can make Roger Goodell look good, you just have to know where to look for them. One such example is Virginia dad/rich jerk-off Dan Hinkle who put $150,000 dollars to horrendous use by purchasing the "South County Youth Association," a pee-wee football league that consisted of roughly 250 players. One of those players was far more important than the rest—Scott Hinkle, who happened to share the commish's last name because he was his son. Dan used his position as the league's sole financier to swing his dick, telling Scott's coaches:

"Scott does not sit out on defense—ever. He goes in and stays in. That includes all practices, scrimmages and games. This entire league exists so he can play defense on the best team in his weight class. . . . He is my son, I own the league, and he plays every snap on defense."

Even though they were "the best team in the weight class," they found themselves fighting for a spot in the playoffs during the last game of the season. In desperation mode, the coaches flipped Scott from defense to offense, and the team won in overtime. Dan didn't bother to attend the game but later, upon learning of the coach's treachery, went nuclear and fired the entire staff before fielding replacements for the playoffs. The question of whether or not they could win a title with new coaches went unanswered as the team of 12-to-14-year-olds protested by refusing to take the field.

Afterward the league disbanded when Hinkle's dictatorship was found to be in violation of league rules, meaning there was no elected board or grievance procedure.

2.A woman hires a hitman to take out the mother of her daughter's rival.

Name: Wanda Holloway

Year: 1991

Sport: Cheerleading

Junior high cheerleading is serious business. No wait, it isn't at all. In fact, it might be the most inconsequential thing on the planet. That's what makes the Wanda Holloways of the world so unique. You see, back in 1991, Holloway's 14-year-old daughter Shanna lost a spot on her middle school cheerleading squad to "rival" (not our word) Amber Heath. Not content with being your garden variety pain-in-the-ass complain to the coaches parent, Wanda asked her former brother-in-law Terry Harper to find a hitman who could kill Amber's mom, Verna. This, Wanda assumed, would devastate Amber so much that she would drop out of cheerleading and possibly lead to some further emotional damage beyond cheerleading.

Unfortunately Terry immediately snitched, because apparently Wanda couldn't trust the brother of the man she had an ugly divorce with. After separate sentences of both 15 and 10 years, Wanda was released after six months, because even though you've heard "good things happen to good people," they also happen to bad people, so really the lesson is do whatever the fuck you want.

1.Thomas Junta becomes the standard by which all other angry parents will be judged.

Name: Thomas Junta

Year: 2000

Sport: Hockey

In doing research for this piece there were only two cases I had any prior knowledge about. I knew Mitch Williams was a piece of work, and I knew the story of Thomas Junta, a parent so out of control he got his own infamous label. You may know him as the imaginatively monikered "Hockey Dad." In 2002, Hockey Dad went ber-fucking-zerk and beat coach Michael Costin (who, himself, had a lengthy rap sheet) to death for allowing rough play in a pickup hockey game. A dozen kids witnessed the event, possibly invoking the "stop, stop he's already dead," Simpsons quote, which we're sure is a lot less funny when it's actually true. At trial, Junta somehow avoided charges of voluntary manslaughter because jurors bought his "self-defense" defense, though he was almost twice the size of Costin. After eight years, Junta returned to society, but the tale doesn't really end there.

You see, of the 12 people who witnessed the senseless beating, three were Costin's sons and another was Junta's. As you might have guessed, that's the type of shit that can have later-manifesting consequences, whether your dad was the aggressor or victim. Junta's son went on to break into somebody's house before pistol whipping and robbing him. As for one of Costin's sons (Michael Jr.), he got a year-and-a-half in prison for beating his girlfriend and stealing her car. Then when he got out, he caused some more trouble.

While it's impossible to surmise if these later legal problems were directly caused by Junta's infamous loss of control, we'd say it's a pretty damn good guess. It's also probably safe to guess that this is why youth leagues look for good role models.