Growing Rage on Sidelines Takes Life of Hockey Dad

It started as a kids’ pickup hockey game, and ended as a homicide.

Angry words between two fathers whose sons were on the ice here Thursday swiftly degenerated to blows. Forty-year-old Michael Costin, a single father of four, was left for dead in front of a soda machine at the Burbank Ice Arena in this working-class community north of Boston. In a case that suggests that the hair-trigger hostility that provokes road rage and air rage is now a growing element in youth sports, Thomas F. Junta, 42, was charged Monday with manslaughter.

“We allege the death resulted from wanton and reckless assault and battery inflicted by Mr. Junta,” Middlesex County Dist. Atty. Martha Coakley said in bringing the charge.

Coakley said an autopsy showed brain death for Costin was “pretty much instantaneous.” Junta offered no comment Monday when he pleaded not guilty and was released on $5,000 bail.

The case gripped with grief the nearby town of Lynnfield, where Costin lived. Shock also permeated the region’s avid hockey population. But youth sports specialists said the tragedy was the lamentable culmination of a growing tide of violence among parents on or near the playing field.

Costin, a self-employed carpenter, had been acting as goalie during stick practice for 10-year-olds when his son and Junta’s engaged in an on-ice shoving match. Angrily, Junta came down from the stands in the 1,000-seat arena to demand that Costin break up the boys, police said. The fathers traded verbal insults.

When ice time ended, Junta was waiting for Costin. The 6-foot-2, 275-pound truck driver allegedly held Costin--who stood 5 feet 11 and weighed 170 pounds--in a headlock and began to pummel him. Rink managers separated the men and ordered Junta to leave. But outside the locker room, Junta knocked Costin to the floor. As Costin’s children watched, a police report says, Junta held his knee to Costin’s chest and used his fists to beat the smaller man unconscious.

While both men frequented the rink in this hockey-hungry town, Coakley said, “we have some indication that they did not know each other before this event.” Junta has been charged with manslaughter rather than murder, she said, because “there is no indication of an intent to kill.”

Several dozen people witnessed some or all of the dispute between Junta and Costin, the district attorney said. She confirmed that body-checking and fighting occurred during the hockey practice and that the fathers exchanged words “about what Costin was or wasn’t doing on the ice” to intercede.

Costin had a lengthy police record involving assault and disorderly conduct, but for at least the last three years had remained on the right side of the law. He and his children lived with his mother.

The fatal altercation here follows a string of violent episodes among parents at youth athletic events. On Memorial Day, police arrested two parents in Amherst, Mass., for disorderly conduct and assault following a fight at a soccer game. Also at a soccer game, a Virginia mother last year was fined after she attacked a 14-year-old referee. In Davie, Fla., a few weeks ago, a father serving as a Little League first-base coach disputed the call of a 23-year-old umpire by breaking his jaw. Charges in that case are pending.

“Across the country, we are hearing of more and more incidents like this,” said Fred Engh, president of the National Alliance for Youth Sports in West Palm Beach, Fla. Based on reports from 2,200 chapters nationwide and from “constant feedback” from parents and recreation professionals, Engh said violence among parents in youth athletics has risen threefold in the past five years.

“They’re ruining sports for our children,” Engh said. “They’re acting out of fear, ego and greed, and they’re causing psychological, physical and emotional abuse for our children. The attitudes of people about youth sports have just become more violent, more extreme, more intense.”

At the National Assn. of Sports Professionals in Racine, Wis., spokesman Bob Still said “assault insurance” became an automatic benefit for his organization’s 19,000 members a year and a half ago. The group represents umpires, referees, coaches and others in sports at all levels, from professional to Little League.

“We don’t have any scientific studies or anything, but our association is in its 20th year, and we have definitely seen a trend of increasing violence,” Still said. “It’s not just the violence that’s increased, but the type of violence. We have reports of gunfire and reports of tire irons being used on people. It’s youth sports rage, and it’s definitely on the increase.”

Still theorized that violence in youth sports is on the upswing because “parents aren’t taking responsibility anymore for their children’s actions in sports. They’re looking for justice all the time. In sports, when an official or a player makes a mistake, you go on. Now it seems like everyone wants a pound of flesh.”

But Boston University sports psychology professor Leonard Zaichowsky said competition for college athletic scholarships has also increased the pressure around youth sports. “It really has become high stakes. If you’re a gifted athlete, it opens a lot of doors for you academically and professionally,” he noted.

He added that sports rage is little different from road rage or air rage. “It’s a very similar sociological phenomenon,” Zaichowsky said. “It’s anger, mixed with an uncontrollable need to be physical.”

Sports psychologist Stanley H. Teitelbaum of Teaneck, N.J., said the profusion of sports on television and elsewhere also accounts for the increasing “in-your-face” quality of an ostensibly recreational activity.

“Sports is so much now a central part of peoples’ existences. They relate their life through their sports or through their children’s sports,” Teitelbaum said. When emotional issues arise, “they’re that much more prone to express their aggression and anger through things related to sports. And it takes much, much less to trigger them.”

In nearby Lynnfield, meanwhile, the funeral of Costin--described as a devoted father who lived to play sports with his kids--was scheduled for today. Junta, who kept street hockey goals in his yard here and often shot hoops with his children, left home for a vacation over the weekend, but he returned Monday to turn himself in to authorities.

Engh, of the National Alliance for Youth Sports, noted sadly that stop signs usually only go up after a terrible traffic accident.

“Well,” he said, “maybe this is the stop sign for youth sports.”