Screaming at a teenage ref won’t change the call. It just shows every kid in the stands how to lose.

The call will not change, and everyone shouting knows it, so the shouting is doing something else. What it is doing is teaching: a stand full of children is watching an adult handle an unfavourable outcome by blaming a sixteen-year-old. They absorb it completely and reproduce it at their own games within a season.

If you are in the stands at a younger sibling’s game, be the person who goes quiet at the worst call of the afternoon. Say one encouraging thing afterwards to the kid in the uniform. The children near you learn what losing looks like from whoever is loudest.