Leading off today: As the year winds down, a time-honored tradition heats up. Newspapers and other media run year-end lists, sparing reporters from having to crank out actual stories.
There's nothing wrong with that mind you, especially when the lists are as fun as this one.
Withour further adieu, the Positive Coaching Alliance, founded as a non-profit within the Stanford University Athletic Department in 1998, offers its list of the worst behavior in sports from pee-wees to the pros:
10. Former Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs pitcher Mitch "Wild Thing" Williams lives up to his nickname by cursing officials at his daughter's fifth-grade CYO basketball game, leading the director of officials to say that if Williams "enters the gym . . . we will stop officiating."
9. Suburban Portland, Ore., sheriff's deputies rush to a sixth-grade girls basketball game that nearly turns into a riot after a coach is ejected, slams his clipboard, cutting a player and threatens a 17-year-old referee.
8. A minor-league baseball brawl between the Peoria Chiefs and Dayton Dragons is lowlighted by a player attempting to throw a ball into the opposing team's dugout, instead striking a fan, who was taken to the hospital.
7. On the same court that hosted the infamous Pistons-Pacers brawl, the highest-profile women's sports brawl in U.S. history breaks out between the WNBA's Detroit Shock and Los Angeles Sparks.
6. A 7-on-7 summer exhibition football game between two of South Florida's top high school teams, Pahokee and Miami's Booker T. Washington, devolves into a brawl, resulting in the hospitalization of a coach.
5. A Georgia high school baseball catcher is caught on video ducking under a pitch so that it smacks the mask of the umpire with whom the catcher was arguing.
4. In a post-game handshake line, a St. Louis-area youth football coach is caught on video violently shoving the face mask of an 11-year-old opponent.
3. Angered by an official's call in an Olympic-medal taekwondo match, Angel Matos demonstrates his superior skill by kicking the official in the face.
2. In a dispute over playing time at a game for seven- and eight-year-olds, a Lubbock, Texas, soccer dad aims his gun at his daughter's coach's husband.
1. A Chicago high school volleyball coach is caught on video paddling players in practice for their on-court mistakes.
Niagara Catholic adds boys soccer: Niagara Catholic sponsored a boys soccer team in 1992 when the turnout for football was too low to field a team. Now, the school will try
