Parents of North Meck Soccer Club players have been put on notice by the club's leadership. Clean up your act on the sidelines, repeat offenders are being warned, or the next time you'll get a red card.

In soccer, a red card means instant ejection of a player. It's somewhat ritualistic, the referee standing directly in front of the offending player, a red card pulled from a pocket and held directly overhead, followed by an official notation of the action written in a small notebook.

In most instances, they've first been issued a yellow card, essentially a warning. But starting now with year-round competitive teams and this spring when the recreational league season begins, there are no yellow cards for spectators. Parents deemed acting outside the bounds of acceptable behavior — improperly coaching their kids from the sidelines, yelling at referees or coaches or even berating any players on the field — will be ejected from the premises for the remainder of the day.

And they will have to take their child with them.

North Meck Soccer Club is a massive organization, whose average of 15 percent growth per year has seen its membership swell to some 3,500 individuals. Executive Director Thomas Finlay takes no small measure of pride in running a clean, well-organized and highly respected program. But he has been troubled by a growing trend of parents behaving poorly, and he had been thinking for awhile about taking more aggressive action in addressing the issue.

An incident last fall found its mark like a well-executed header at the goal mouth, and Finlay and his board of directors determined it was time to take action.