The accounts of what happened during an informal youth hockey skate-around in Reading, Mass., on July 5 should make you sick. It should make your siblings sick. It should make your friends sick. It should make everyone else you know who has kids, is related to a kid, likes hanging out with kids or once met a kid sick.

There's no two ways about it.

	Luke Meredith

Thomas Junta is the father of a youth hockey player in Reading. Michael Costin was the father of a youth hockey player in Reading. Their children were playing some summer hockey at the Burbank Ice Arena when Junta's boy and Costin's boy , along with some of the other players , began fighting with each other on the ice. Costin was on the ice, and Junta was watching from the stands when the children began fighting.

Junta became upset about how Costin was handling the situation. The adults began screaming at each other and engaged in a brief shoving match. A rink employee threw the 6-foot-2, 275-pound Junta out of the rink, but he came back and met the 5-foot-11, 170-pound Costin in a hallway.

There, at a place where their children had come to skate for fun, Junta knocked Costin to the ground, pushed his knee in Costin's chest and proceeded to beat him senseless.

Michael Costin was pronounced brain-dead last Thursday, and his life ended the following day, when doctors pulled him off a ventilator. On Monday, July 10, Middlesex County prosecutors announced Junta will be tried for manslaughter.

Now, the easiest thing to do would be to cast Junta in the villain's role, Costin as the martyr and close the books on this tragedy. But accounts don't support such simple classifications. Junta has been described by friends and fellow fans of Reading youth league hockey as a man who wouldn't say a peep at games. Costin, on the other hand, has been sent to jail seven times for crimes ranging from drug offenses to assaulting a police officer. Then again, he has also been described by his pastor as "a good man," and friends say he was easygoing.

But that just proves nothing in this world is black and white. Junta and Costin are simply sad examples of the culture that is extremist youth sports parenting. And who's to blame for that,

Blame, of course, is such a petty thing. It's born out of jealousy, rage and all the other things people feel when they can't be ,the bigger person." It might not be an honorable emotion, but anger will do that to you. And in a situation as tragic as this, somebody has to take the blame.

No, scratch that. Everybody has to take the blame.

Everybody who has ever yelled at a referee at a youth or high school game so loudly that his or her kid ducks his or her head in shame. Everybody that has reamed a son or daughter's coach for not giving his or her child enough playing time. Everybody who lets his or her kids act in an unsportsmanlike manner. Everybody who teaches his or her children to take sports too seriously.

I'm pointing a finger at the father from Plano, Texas, who put a ref in a headlock during a high school hockey tournament. Another finger goes in the direction of the police officer from Pennsylvania who paid a Little League pitcher $2 to bean an opposing player. Another finger , and an angry glare , goes to the parent from Kirkland, Wash., who broke another parent's nose over a dispute involving a wrestling match between their 6-year-old sons.

And my last finger goes out to the divorced man at my nephew's Little League game in New Hampshire a few months back. He decided that the best way to solve a dispute about the custody rights of his son was to scream at the child's mother, 10 feet away from the team's bench, during the fifth inning. It probably never occurred to him that one of the reasons his son loves playing baseball is because it's one of the few places he can't hear his parents fighting.

I blame them all. Everybody. Everybody who has created this culture in which children are taught that winning is everything, sportsmanship is an arbitrary concept and anyone who wrongs you in pursuit of said goals is deserving of verbal and even physical abuse.

I want to stand up and scream at everybody the way certain parents scream at the umpire who calls strike three on their kid. But I can't, because there would be so many people to yell at that my words would drift into an abyss of "just don't get it."

So for everybody who has done wrong at a youth or high school sporting event, I'll ask you just this: Please let this be the final chapter in a sad era of extremist sports parenting. If you don't think you can do it, just try and picture Michael Costin's children, who watched in horror as their father was beaten to death , over a youth hockey game.

Your kids are watching. Trust me on this one.

Luke Meredith is the Northeast Assistant Regional Editor at SchoolSports.com.