It began as a simple hockey practice, with kids taking turns slapping shots at the goalie in a Reading, Mass., skating rink on July 5. Michael Costin, 40, a self-employed handyman and father of four whose three sons, Brendan, 13, Michael, 12, and Sean, 10, were also on the ice, was informally supervising the play. After a while things got a bit rough, and Thomas Junta, 42, one of a handful of people in the stands, complained loudly to Costin when his 10-year-old took an elbow to the nose. Accounts vary, but some say Junta stepped to the edge of the ice, where he and Costin got into a shoving match and a rink employee ordered Junta to leave the building.

He did. But a short time later Junta returned and confronted Costin outside the locker room. At that point, Junta, standing 6'1" and weighing 260 lbs., allegedly knocked the 170-lb. Costin to the floor and, kneeling on his chest, "was doing a job on him, whacking him...and slapping his head on the floor," Reading Police Chief Edward Marchand told The Boston Globe. When officers arrived, Costin, whose sons witnessed the beating, was unconscious and had no pulse. Two days later he was removed from life support and died. Junta, initially charged with simple assault, was arraigned on manslaughter charges, pleading not guilty. Said Costin's mother, Joan, 67, a registered nurse, to the Boston Herald: "I've never even heard of something like this. All it was was a stick practice."

Unfortunately, it was not an isolated case of violence triggered by children's sports. In March a 40-year-old father in Staten Island allegedly broke the nose of his 10-year-old son's coach with a hockey stick. In May a father in Piano, Texas, scuffled with a referee during a high school hockey tournament. And on June 19 in Hollywood, Fla., an assistant baseball coach with the local Police Athletic League was charged with aggravated battery after reportedly throwing a punch that broke an umpire's jaw.

Sports officials say that such incidents of uncontrolled anger are clearly on the rise. Fourteen states have now passed laws allowing local courts to impose the same stiff sentences for attacks on sports officials that are levied for those against police officers and teachers. According to Bob Still, spokesman for the Wisconsin-based National Association of Sports Officials, which now offers so-called assault insurance to its 19,000 referee and umpire members, "There is too much crossing the line now. It's getting way too physical. There are parents who are powder kegs just waiting to explode."

Friends say that neither Costin nor Junta fits that description. Yet neither man was a stranger to violence. Costin, the son of an amateur boxer, began having problems at 15, the same year his older brother Dennis, an alcoholic and runaway, was fatally stabbed by their father during an argument in the family kitchen. Michael "became so depressed about losing his brother that he-started self-medicating with alcohol," says Gus Costin, now 67, who claimed that the death was accidental but served six months on a conviction for manslaughter. Between 1983 and 1995 Michael landed behind bars five times on charges ranging from breaking and entering with a loaded gun to assaulting a police officer. As a result, he lost custody of his children. At the time of his death he was also estranged from his wife, Linda Costin, a native of Ireland who was recently remanded to the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service after serving time in an assault case.

Sadly, Costin's death came at a time when he seemed to be turning his life around. In January he won back custody of all four of his children, including daughter Tara, 9, and in the months since, say friends, had shown himself a devoted father. "He wasn't someone who would drop the kids off and come back an hour later," says Brian Mahoney, 49, whose son was a friend of the Costins'. "He'd go out and come home with them and a couple other kids too."

Although prosecutors say that in 1992 Junta was charged with assault and battery (there were no court findings in the case), friends insist that he is a peaceful man. His attorney claims that Junta, a truck driver who had moved to Reading 10 years ago with his wife and two children, acted in self-defense at the rink. "He has cried over [the Costin] kids' losing their father," his brother James told the Herald. "He feels terrible about it." Meanwhile, the Costin children have been taken in by relatives. As a final gesture at their father's wake, they placed in his hands a worn baseball on which the oldest son had written the words, "We love you Dad. Love, Brendan."

Susan Schindehette
Tom Duffy in Reading