I’m not sure why, but many of the same adults who take a perverse pleasure in shaking already insecure teenagers are the same adults who seek out- and get- high school coaching positions. They are whimsically unfair, knee-jerk belligerent, and unchallenged, wreak havoc on adolescent psyches while parents watch from the sidelines. Why doesn’t anyone stop them? My theory is as much as the superego wants to see progeny treated with compassion and respect, the ego would rather have the kid play.

It happens in fields, tracks, pools and courts everywhere, every day. Otherwise good people refuse to speak up when another human being is not simply being an asshole, but being an asshole intent on inflicting enduring emotional damage on someone they love. Maybe it harkens back to the hunter/gatherer days, when people refused to confront the cruelest, most impulsive caveman because of the sharpened mastodon tusk in his hand, and the possible dinner he’d be bringing home and divvying up. Maybe this is a basic survival instinct, and it has us hardwired to keep our mouths shut and hope for the best.

Anyway, yesterday I watched a minor tyrant stomp up and down a soccer field at a small New England prep school, making his team feel like crap. It bothered me, but you’d never know. I was the definitive bystander, mutely complicit in this gentrified barbarity. Retrospectively, I kept thinking about my silence. I woke up around three a.m. with the thought that our school pays the ADL to put on anti-bullying presentations (“if it’s mean, intervene!”) but unofficially sanctions bullying when it comes to sports. I decided that today is the day I speak out. I figure if enough of us leave the sidelines and take the field, someday, they’re going to have to change the way they play the game.