RALEIGH - A rash of parent-on-parent confrontations and clashes with referees last weekend -- some prompted by the quest for shade -- prompted the area's largest youth soccer league to suspend five adults.

The parents and coaches will be banned from attending one game sponsored by Capital Area Soccer League, many of whose teams have matches this weekend. The suspensions stemmed from altercations in three separate Challenge-division games, according to league officials.

In one that CASL officials documented in e-mail messages to league coaches and parents this week, spectators stood back and watched as a fight broke out among parents, leaving a youth referee to break up the altercation.

"It never ceases to amaze me the insensitivity of parents to kids," said Apex High Principal Matthew Wight, who coaches two of his daughters' CASL teams. "Not just the kids playing, but oftentimes there are kids refereeing."

"I think people lose their perspective and forget these are just little kids."

In as many as six games last weekend, clashes erupted in part because parents of players on opposing teams ignored league rules by sitting on the same side of the field. At stake in some cases was an elusive spot of shade, according to CASL e-mail to coaches.

"When it's hot, it's easier for tempers to flare. We just have to step on it when it happens," Charlie Slagle, CASL executive director, said Friday. "That kind of suspension hopefully will help everyone think about what their own behavior is. Because even some of the most levelheaded people, when they watch their child play, get more excited than they need to and say things that they don't need to say."

CASL has 2,000 youth players in the Challenge division alone, on 167 teams. Thousands of Triangle families migrate to soccer fields every weekend to watch their kids play. Although this week marks the most recent disciplinary crackdown, CASL is not the only local youth sports league to address the challenge of parents bullying referees, interfering with coaches or scrapping with each other.

Two years ago, the Raleigh Parks and Recreation Department erected 6-foot-tall chain-link fences around its youth football fields to prevent parents from interfering with coaches and game officials.

Michael Kanters, an associate professor of sports management in N.C. State's Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management department, said that incidents such as those documented by CASL remain isolated, but leagues need a zero-tolerance policy for any aggression.

"Every parent out there, even the ones that are jumping across the field and confronting referees and coaches, they're there because they think they're doing something great for their kids," Kanters said. "But if this parent is creating an unsafe environment, then absolutely, they should not be there. Period, end of story."

Even before last weekend's incidents, CASL had begun airing public-service announcements stressing good sportsmanship on sports radio. T-shirts handed out to children playing in CASL's 10-and-under and younger divisions feature slogans such as "Sportsmanship is a family value" and "Play hard, enjoy your snack."

Of the thousands of families at CASL games every weekend, Vincent Mangelli said 98 percent just want to come out and cheer for their kids and enjoy the games.

Now in his second year as CASL's Challenge-division chairman, Mangelli petitioned the league several years ago to enact "Silent Sundays," a policy ordering spectators at Challenge-division games to limit themselves to clapping and cheering. No yelling at the coaches or referees, no directing your kids on the field.

The suggestion didn't get too far, Mangelli said.

"I'm giving thought again to maybe moving to that," he said.