Father’s threat against hockey player leads to suit

PORTLAND – The father of a 13-year-old hockey player who was threatened by another parent over a hard check that sent a player to the ice says he had no choice but to sue because the defendant wouldn’t apologize.

Jordan Hale says the man approached him after the game, waved the butt end of a hockey stick and snarled: “Number 7, stay away from my (expletive) kid!” As a coach ushered the man out the door, Hale heard him say, “I’ll get you next time.”

The Dec. 10, 2001, incident was over in a matter of seconds. The man, Demetri Antoniou, a Portland physician who lives in Cumberland, never made contact with the boy, and soon withdrew his own son from the Casco Bay Youth Hockey League.

But the case has not gone away.

On Monday, a Cumberland County jury will be asked to decide if Antoniou should be forced to pay unspecified damages to Hale.

Antoniou’s attorney says his client admits that he said things he now wishes he hadn’t.

“He will not deny that he acted stupidly,” said Antoniou’s attorney, Peter DeTroy. “But not every time people act stupidly should end up in a lawsuit.”

Hale’s father, Michael, says Antoniou’s actions were a blatant example of the kind of parent misbehavior that he believes is ruining youth sports in Maine. He hopes the lawsuit will send the message to Antoniou – and other parents – that they are putting too much pressure on children who are playing the games.

“It’s not a money issue,” Michael Hale said. “But maybe next time, they’ll think twice before screaming, which will make it more fun for the kids.”

Complaints of badly behaved spectators at youth athletics events are growing across the state, says Duke Albanese, former state education commissioner. Albanese was co-chairman of the Sports Done Right Initiative, sponsored by the University of Maine last year. He says the panel heard frequent complaints of out-of-control parents and fans, screaming at each other, officials, coaches and young athletes.

“Kids told us they were embarrassed by their parents and said they felt pressure that was taking the fun out of sports,” Albanese said. “In many cases it made them decide, ‘I’m not going to do this anymore.”‘

In some places, the confrontations have become violent. Three weeks after the Portland incident, Thomas Junta went on trial for beating another hockey player’s father to death outside a Reading, Mass., ice rink. Junta was convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to six to 10 years in prison.

Jordan Hale was in 7th grade at Falmouth Middle School, and playing his first year of organized hockey when he encountered the younger Antoniou. Near the end of a game, Michael Antoniou was handling the puck for another team and Jordan checked him, knocking him to the ice. According to court records, the elder Antoniou believed that Hale drove his hockey stick into his son’s neck. About five minutes after the game, Antoniou said he was looking for his son’s locker room and walked into Hale’s by mistake.

Antoniou was carrying his son’s hockey stick under his arm and asked where Hale was. In his deposition, coach Jim Scala said Antoniou immediately began cursing at the boy and walking toward him. Scala testified that Antoniou “raised his stick and started pointing it at Jordan and said, ‘I will get you next time.”‘

Michael Hale said his son seemed unfazed by the incident at first. But soon his coaches noticed that he had lost his aggressiveness on the ice, and seemed to lose confidence as well.

“My kid was really rattled,” Hale said. “At first he said he didn’t really hear (Antoniou), but later he opened up and the tears came.”

Jordan Hale is now a standout player on the Falmouth varsity soccer and hockey teams. But he says that he was affected by the incident for a while. “I thought about it every day,” he said after hockey practice Thursday.

Hale, who works as a mortgage broker, says he had no choice but to file a lawsuit for the first time in his life.

“What were my options?” Hale asked. “I can hit him in the head, and then I’m in trouble. I can ignore it, which tells my son that Dad is not going to stand up for you and maybe that guy was right. Or, I can go this route.”