Just Call Them Soccer Mums

Coach Bob Miret is clearly not designed to stay quiet. He has too many directives to dispense.

But coaches and parents of a youth soccer league in Glendale and La Crescenta have been told that during this weekend’s games, they can’t make a peep.

Fifteen minutes into a morning match Saturday at the Glendale Sports Complex, Miret’s lips were sealed but his body language was louder than anything he could have shouted.

He threw his arms in the air when a defender didn’t clear the ball fast enough. He bit his nails as he anticipated a drive up-field. He swung his body forward when one of his charges made a run at the goal. And when his team scored, he clapped, the only noise the special rules allowed him to make.

“It’s surreal. It’s such a challenge for me to keep my mouth shut,” Miret, 52, told a reporter. His gestures had made him look like an amped-up mime.

Coaches, parents and all other spectators at Region 88 American Youth Soccer Assn. games were told to stay hushed this weekend as part of a growing etiquette experiment that muzzles feisty adults and empowers children to play their sports with minimal interference.

That means they could mumble, but only beneath their breath. They could express enthusiasm, but only with applause. And when their children scored goals, they could jump for joy but not cheer.

For many of the grown-ups, so-called Silent Soccer is a struggle.

“I should just sit in the car,” said Mary Hannessian, barely watching her 12-year-old daughter from the sidelines. “I don’t want to watch if I can’t shout. It’s like going to a bar and someone saying to you, ‘You can’t have a drink.’ ”

Also known as Silent Saturdays or Silent Sundays, the idea has been gaining steam since the late 1990s, mostly in the nation’s burgeoning youth soccer leagues. This is believed to be the first time a Los Angeles-area AYSO league has tried it.

“We’re giving the kids a chance to play the game. We’re letting them do it their own way,” said Aldo Mascheroni, commissioner of the Region 88 AYSO, adding that if this weekend is a success, the league may try it again.

League officials wanted to have fun with the special weekend. They suggested that teams bring lollipops or suckers to the game to help keep people from talking. One team brought inflatable “thunder sticks” to bash together in place of cheering.

Parents were supposed to police themselves. And after only a few games, the Glendale Sports Complex’s serenity had more in common with a tennis match than a clash of soccer teams.

“I can hear the kids playing,” said Mary Natalizio, enjoying her 13-year-old son’s team, the Sponges, score a 5-3 victory. “But it’s hard to focus. I don’t know much about the game. I usually listen to the coaches and other parents.”

The Sponges’ goalie, Justin Pomar, wouldn’t mind having Silent Soccer every weekend.

“It’s easier to concentrate,” said Pomar, 13. “Sometimes I get annoyed when I thought I did something good and they [the adults] say I did it wrong.”

But Natalizio’s son Joseph, like some other children, wasn’t entirely sold on Silent Soccer.

“It was hard,” he said while resting on the sideline. “We didn’t have any direction. I think I nearly slipped because of that. The parents weren’t shouting as much, but I don’t think it made a difference.”

No one seemed to be having a harder time trying to stifle noise than Kim Espe, watching her 12-year-old, Lindsey. Her husband had suggested duct-taping her mouth shut before the game. Lindsey had made a discreet sign that said, “Orange,” for her mother to flash when she didn’t think her daughter was hustling enough. But they forgot to take it out of the car.

“This is going to be hard,” Espe said moments before the first whistle.

When the referee approached the center to start the game, Espe blurted, “Hey Jules! How are you?”

“Shhhhhh,” he responded.

The whistle blew and Espe started pacing back and forth, swallowing her words and swiping her sneakers against the ground like a thoroughbred ready to break the gates. But she couldn’t take it.

“Whoooo! Great kick, Rachel. Go, go, go,” she said, under her breath.

Three minutes later, her daughter’s team, the Vicious Vampires, scored against the Iron Maidens.

“I’ll give $100 for the team party right now if I can scream because they scored a goal,” she said to the other parents.

When it was over, her team had won and Espe was ready to explode. “Good job,” she said, hugging her daughter.

“We won, but we probably could have scored more” with audible words of encouragement, Lindsey said.

Espe turned to the other parents and said, “Ah-ha, that was awful. I’ve got all this stuff trapped inside me. I’ve got to go home and yell.”

Jacqueline Baker, an almost equally animated Vicious Vampire mother next to Espe, said the game felt more like a practice than a competition.

“It’s 100% torture for the parents,” Baker said. “I was so frustrated. I probably cursed 15 times to myself.”

The quiet competitions are also meant to serve as a respite for the volunteer referees, many of whom endure incessant criticism from the sidelines.

The swipes “bother you,” said Bob McDonnald, a referee in a yellow-and-black-striped jersey before an 8:30 a.m. boys’ match at the Glendale Sports Complex.

McDonnald nodded toward a man in a tracksuit several feet away and said, “I ejected that coach right there a month ago for being obnoxious. His parents got out of control. I stopped the game and called him out. He walked away and told me, ‘Why don’t you learn to blow your whistle?’ I said, ‘That’s it, you’re ejected.’ ”

When halftime rolled around 30 minutes later, McDonnald said he was stunned by the difference the rule made.

“It doesn’t seem natural,” he said. “I’m not used to that subdued quietness.”

“It’s deafening,” deadpanned Jordan Nedeff, a sideline referee.

After halftime in another match, referee Jules Valliere said it was refreshing not to hear, “Ref, you must be blind, that wasn’t even close.”

Frank Bagheri, the region’s referee administrator, said his wife once confronted some parents who were lobbing insults at him during a game.

“It’s an unfortunate part of our culture,” Bagheri said. “We all think we know the game better than anyone else.”

But Region 88 officials consider themselves lucky. Ornery grown-ups notwithstanding, the league has not experienced the extreme cases of violence that have marred youth sports in recent years.

In 2001, more than 30 parents and coaches clashed on a soccer field in San Juan Capistrano after an adult tried to pick a fight with a teenager from the opposition team. Three adults were arrested.

A year earlier, a father of a Northridge Little Leaguer was sentenced to 45 days in jail for attacking and threatening to kill his son’s coach because his child was permitted to play only half of the game.

The ugliest incident occurred that year, when a Massachusetts father beat another father to death at a youth hockey game.

“I think youth sports, as a whole, had taken on an unfortunate focus,” said Rick Davis, the national director of programs for the AYSO. “It’s all about being on the best team with the best coach and the best record. They’re developing kids 5, 6, 7 years old to be college scholarship athletes. That was never what youth sports was supposed to be.”

On the sidelines of one of the girls’ matches, Hannessian conceded that she had offered a lot of unnecessary free advice in the past.

“You need to express emotion,” she said. “It’s part of the entree. You can’t sit here and be mute. It takes the fun away from the game. Every now and then we have one bad apple. Why should we all have to pay for one bad apple?”