Hockey Lawsuit Shows Americans' Softness Becoming Contagious
Friday, July 2, 2010 at 11:45AM 
Parents In Canada Seek
$25,000 After Sons Miss Cut
One Great Season
Remember when a pair of overprotective parents sued a Texas high school because their daughter didn't make the JV cheerleading squad?
That was in 2007, and no doubt hundreds of frivolous lawsuits have been filed in the United States since. It's our style to obsess over blame, and to look everywhere outside of ourselves for it. And then to take ridiculous legal action when we think we've found it.
But now, Canada, or, America's Hat, is trying to get in on the act.
Parents of two teen boys who failed to make a junior club team in a Toronto hockey league have teamed up to sue the league, the club and several coaches for $25,000.
I've always known hockey as a game of grace on skates with a dash of brut strength. Elegant athletes and tough-guy bullies. Finesse and force. And now, thanks to a couple of bitch-boy dads ... lawyers and courtrooms?
Canada hasn't had this much reason to be embarrassed since Nelly Furtado.
In their lawsuit, the parents whine about the destruction of their sons' dignity and "irreparable psychological damage" and so forth.
I'm no mental health expert, but I'm pretty sure that's called life. Not making a team is like not getting the job or a promotion, or asking out a pretty girl and being rejected. There are highs and lows, good times and bad. You win some; you lose some.
I didn't make the freshman basketball team at my first high school, so do you know what I did? I came home the day I got cut, went down to the playground and vowed to make the JV team the next year. Sure I took the easy way out a week later when I told my dad I wanted to transfer back to the public school, which I did at the end of the semester. That's a soft enough move, but not for one second would we have considered blaming anyone other than myself for simply not being as good as the guys who were selected ahead of me.
If David Longo wants to cry about his son's self-esteem, perhaps he should find meaning, as I do and as many do, in one of the many great John Wooden quotes: "If you make the effort to do the best of which you're capable, and try to improve the situation that exists for you, I think that's success."
The real failure here isn't that two teens didn't make their hockey team; it's that their dads aren't using this great and easy opportunity to teach their impressionable boys a valuable lesson at a critical time in their lives. Instead of learning about hard work and perseverance, these boys are watching their dads make a spectacle of their families.
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