Penalty For Rink Rage

By RICHARD CORLISS

Hockey is a beautiful game: it puts strength, finesse and teamwork into play on ice at 35 m.p.h. Parenthood is an honorable, often heroic estate: it sacrifices sleep and self for a child's greater good. But parents at a hockey game--that spectacle is not always either beautiful or honorable. This time it was deadly.

In a case that elbowed terrorism off the top of the radio talk-show topic list and gave American parents and sports fans plenty of dark thoughts, a Reading, Mass., truck driver was on trial last week for killing the adult supervising a kids' hockey scrimmage. Friday evening, after a six-day trial in which the defendant and his son both testified, a jury of nine women and three men convicted Thomas Junta, 44, of involuntary manslaughter, which could earn him up to 20 years in the state penalty box. The most likely sentence, to be announced at a hearing Jan. 25, is three to five years.

Here are a few basic principles, news to nobody. Sports stoke adrenaline, laying out a drama that usually ends in an unambiguous win or loss. "Fan" is short for fanatic; each close pitch or missed basket or hard body check makes manic-depressives of a team's rooters. And some parents are among the most rabid, reckless fans. Inflating their kids' skills, magnifying a child's lapses, they can make dinnertime a celebration or an inquisition; and if they don't take out their frustration on the infant athletes, they may attack the arbiters. "Kill the umpire" is only a marginal exaggeration.

Consider: In 1999 a chunky football dad (and youth-league coach) assaulted a nine-year-old player. In 2000, a Staten Island, N.Y., father broke the nose of his 10-year-old's coach with a hockey stick. And it ain't just tes-tosterone: In 1999 a Virginia soccer mom was fined after attacking a referee; the ref was 14. Americans don't generate the headlines Europeans do (HUNDREDS CRUSHED IN SOCCER RIOT!), and given the tens of millions of parents who cheer on their kids, the number of sports-psychosis cases is low. But we can still fret when adults go nuts over what should be only a game.

The pretty irony about the Reading incident is that it began as a pacifist plea. On July 5, 2000, Junta--whose stature (6 ft. 1 in.), girth (270 lbs.) and receding hairline ensure that James Gandolfini will play him in the inevitable TV movie--was watching an informal practice involving his son at the Burbank Ice Arena. He became so vexed at the violence he saw on the rink that he confronted the man who had volunteered as referee, Michael Costin (6 ft., 156 lbs.), for allowing it. Costin snapped back, "That's hockey." The two men scuffled, and Junta left the arena. He returned and repeatedly whacked the ref, knocking him out, as the children, including Junta's son and three of Costin's, watched in horror. The force of the blows ruptured an artery in Costin's neck, resulting in a severe brain hemorrhage. He fell into a coma and died the next day.

The case was the anxious talk of Reading, a typical New England "hockey town" 11 miles north of Boston. The local high school has boys' and girls' hockey teams. The locals are proud when one of their own goes on to play the sport in college or, like 1998 Reading High grad Chris Dyment, is drafted by the pros. And they have learned to live with strictures on violent behavior. Leagues in Reading, as in many other towns, have explicit rules forbidding parents from assaulting coaches. Some leagues even have security details on hand. Andrew Lauria, a police officer in nearby Revere with a seven-year-old son in hockey, is appalled that his service is now necessary. "I'll take the work if it's there," Lauria says, "but, I mean--it's come to this?"

Reading's hockey families see the Junta incident as an unfortunate encounter rather than the spawn of rink rage. "The vast majority of parents are doing this for the right reasons," says John Rattigan, a lawyer and father of three boys, all of whom play hockey at the Burbank arena. "We don't necessarily clap for the other side, but we try to be good sports." Rattigan, who does not know Junta or Costin, calls the fight "a very isolated, unusual, scary incident."

He may be right, for the Junta trial has weird contours all its own. It happens that the victim was not the first Costin to die violently. In the '70s, during a family argument, his brother Dennis was killed by their father Gus, who was convicted of manslaughter. Outside the Cambridge, Mass., courtroom on Friday, a few hours before the guilty verdict was read, Gus Costin approached Junta, put his hand on the man's shoulder and said, "I don't hate you. I forgive you." Junta answered, "Thank you," and the two killers of Costin boys shook hands in solemnity and an awful kind of solidarity.

--Reported by Matt Kelly/Reading

With reporting by Matt Kelly/Reading