You don't have to make the best things up in life. No, they simply happen, and you stand out of the way and let them present themselves. Take the case of Scituate, Massachusetts soccer coach Michael Kinahan, who took Kicking & Screaming as not a comedy but an instruction manual for how to run a youth soccer team.
↵↵Kinahan actually did and said the following: ↵
↵↵-- Called his team of six and seven year old girls by the name of "Green Death." ↵
↵↵-- Allegedly chewed out a 12-year-old ref so badly she quit officiating. ↵
↵↵-- Advised his players to eat "undercooked red meat." ↵
↵↵-- Told them to take the field "like a Michael Vick pit bull." ↵
↵↵-- Informed parents that this was not "two hours of free babysitting," and that he was not going to tolerate them sitting on the sidelines “in their LL Bean chairs sipping mocha-latte-half-caf-chinos” and not cheering. ↵
↵↵Kinehan -- who thinks "winning is fun, and losing is for losers” -- has been removed as coach, but still stands by his statements. In large part, he's right: he's there to teach them soccer, not to baby-sit. I wasn't aware teaching soccer involved some kind of Spartan survival training akin to what the cast of 300 went through, but I'm not a coach. If he says it means running seven year olds until they pass out and vomit, and if he says parents should throw road flares onto the field like they're Italian soccer hooligans ... well, he would know best. ↵
↵This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.