Annette John-Hall: Sportsmanship, and its opposite

As a former basketball mom who was well-known for her, uh, overenthusiastic cheerleading, I know all too well how easy it is to get too wrapped up in your child's performance.

Me, I lived and died with every shot. I used my so-called expertise as a former sportswriter to haggle the ref on almost every call - at least the ones that didn't go our team's way.

And don't get me started on my bleacher coaching. It got so bad that my husband distanced himself during games. My son ignored me, my daughter was, well, amused, and my youngest just wanted to bury herself in embarrassment - or bury me.

Like that stopped me.

Still, as annoying as I could be, I knew where to draw the line.

My shenanigans never reached the point of cruelty. I wouldn't think of disparaging my own children, let alone somebody else's.

Which is why I can't even imagine how I would have reacted given what Angela Tillar said she heard during her 9-year-old daughter's championship soccer game last month.

Torri Burrell, Tillar's daughter, plays for South Philly's Anderson Monarchs, one of the few, if not the only, predominantly African American girls' traveling soccer teams in the country.

In a sport that crosses cultural boundaries but is dominated by suburban white kids, the Monarchs distinguish themselves not just because they're black and from the city, but because they can flat-out play. Coach Walt Stewart's South Philly squads are typically atop the standings every year.

So it came as no surprise that the second-place Monarchs would face the first-place South Philadelphia Strikers for the league's indoor championship last month. The teams were neighborhood rivals that featured talented players who played an aggressive, physical brand of soccer.

"When I found out we were playing the Strikers, I thought, 'Uh-oh,' " Tillar recalls, "because they're really good."

Midway through the first half of the championship, Torri, a forward/center who is diminutive but quick and physical, delivered a hard foul to one of the Strikers players, which earned her two minutes in the penalty box.

But instead of going to the penalty box, she made a beeline to her mother in the stands, her mouth covered in distress.

Her mother, alarmed, thought someone's hit had triggered her kidney condition or that she was suffering one of her frequent nosebleeds. Torri was crying, and Torri never cries.

"Mommy, that lady, I'm afraid," Torri told her mother. An opposing parent's sharp words had cut her.

" 'If you push my daughter again, I'll pull all of your hair out of your head,' " Tillar says her daughter quoted the woman as saying.

Tillar, 44, immediately went over to the opposing side of the gym to confront the woman.

"I asked her why she threatened my daughter," says Tillar, admitting she posed the question using profanity, apologizing after Strikers coach Jack Stermel admonished her for using foul language.

Surrounded by Strikers parents, Tillar says, she heard one man in particular yelling things like, "See, that's what I'm talking about? They're acting like animals. . . . They're from the ghetto. They swing from trees."

Looking straight at the man, Tillar said, "You're the most ignorant person I have come in contact with in a very long time."

Tillar says her South Philly neighborhood is 98 percent white, and "they all love me."

"It's not a black or white thing with us, not at all."

Stermel says he did not hear any of his parents making threats, nor did he hear them make racial slurs.

Noting that racial minorities make up roughly half of his team, the coach added that if one of his parents ever made a racial remark, "I wouldn't accept it."

The teams never finished the game, which was suspended after Stewart, the Monarchs coach, pulled his players.

Neither team received trophies reserved for the winner and runner-up.

You could dismiss it as words exchanged in the heat of battle. You could call it an isolated incident.

Except it wasn't.

"Anytime an African American is slightly physical with someone who is not black, they refer to them as animals," says Stewart, who, by the way, is white. "We get this nonsense from people who live in the city all the time. We go out in Chester and Bucks County, we're treated nicely."

For her part, Tillar regrets that her emotional response had unintended consequences.

She says she still feels bad for everyone, not just her daughter.

"It laid on my heart all day," she said. "I felt so bad because of what happened to the team. Torri was so looking forward to the game. I called Coach to apologize because I could have waited [to confront the other parent].

"But it was unacceptable for this person to threaten a child."