If you plan to watch a kid play soccer this weekend, shut up.
We're approaching what is known as "Silent Weekend," a time when people on the sidelines are asked to watch, well, silently.
No fair egging on your kid or berating the other team or the referee. Just shut up and suck on one of the 3,000 lollipops the Central Pennsylvania Youth Soccer League has handed out as a means of engaging your mouth in something besides commentary.
The lollipops, appropriately, are the Dum Dum brand, said Sharon Gregg-Bolognese, president of the league.
She reported that one of the league's 62 clubs -- which she wouldn't name -- experienced a parent problem the first week of play. Things got so bad the referee ordered all parents to sit out the remainder of the game in their cars.
They should be geared up for "Silent Weekend" since their punishment was four weekends of silence, Gregg-Bolognese said.
The soccer league holds "Silent Weekend" in memory of Steve Stabinger, who founded and ran the Campbelltown/Palmyra Soccer Club and administered the parks and rec soccer program.
He had been working on bringing the "Silent Weekend" -- used in other parts of the country -- to Central Pennsylvania for more than a year when he died of heart problems in February 2003 at the age of 59.
In his memory, CPYSL moved ahead with the plan, which muffles talk, but allows the wave and signs. Coaches may correct as needed, but are asked to give players some latitude so they can discover how to play the game without direction.
Isn't that a novel idea?
If you have a computer and you've reached a certain age, you probably are the recipient of the sort of e-mails that bounce around the country bringing smiles to people's faces. Perhaps you've seen the one that begins: "According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the '50s, '60s and '70s probably shouldn't have survived."
It talks about lead paint, family cars without seat belts, medicines without child-proof caps and playing outside from morning until night without parents knowing exactly where we were.
No one had heard the term "play date" back then. Parents didn't send us off with cell phones and water bottles.
We simply went outside, looked around and knocked on doors until we found a companion or two. Then we improvised.
These days, for better or worse, kids' play is organized, supervised and scrutinized. Many clubs start teaching soccer to children at the age of 5, Gregg-Bolognese said. Teams range from under 9 to under 19.
For some reason, most of the problems the league encounters come from parents of 9- and 10-year-olds, she said.
The league employs teen-agers as referees, but many of them become targets of sideline abuse.
"They do two or three games and they won't referee any more," she said.
She related the story of a parent who she said harangued a 14-year-old last Saturday in the pouring rain because a goal post was slightly misplaced.
"It just never stops," she said.
Still, she said she thinks behavior overall has improved since the league began its "Silent Weekend," which is intended to serve as a reminder throughout the season. Because "Silent Weekend" is a league policy, any team, coach or spectator reported for violations will be fined by the league.
"This is still in honor of Steve," Gregg-Bolognese said. "He was hell-bent on putting it in place because he saw it time and time again."