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Both sides brandish guns in Wichita youth football fight between coach, parent

We've heard of athletes behaving badly. We've heard of coaches behaving badly. And we've heard of parents behaving badly. But this strange Greater Wichita Junior Football League saga includes all three, three guns and a pair of brass knuckles.

After her son was dismissed the previous season for what was described as "a character issue" to The Wichita Eagle, a woman reportedly approached the 37-year-old coach of an eighth-grade football team and yelled at him before storming off just prior to police arriving at Linwood Park.

Arguments between parents and coaches over playing time occur on athletic fields across the country, but here's what doesn't normally result: Twenty minutes after the police left, a group of men — one allegedly brandishing a gun and another brass knuckles — came to assault the coach.

As the men punched him in front of youth football players ranging from second to eighth grade, the coach's wife grabbed her gun and fired a shot into the air, according to local media reports out of Wichita. The coach took advantage of the resulting break in action to get his own gun from the car and allegedly aim at his attackers, who fled the scene before police arrived again.

"That coach's wife thought he was going to die," an assistant coach told KAKE-TV. "They hit him in the head with brass knuckles," an assistant coach named only as Tuwain said. "He has a concussion and they were whooping him. Seven or eight of them. So of course, if you're in fear of your life, that's what you're supposed to do. Protect your family."

Added the mother of one player: "Pandemonium. Because we were all concerned about where the kids were, to get the kids off the field, trying to get them safe. There was parents crying."

Both the coach's gun and his wife's weapon, although licensed, were confiscated by the cops, the reports said. The coach reportedly lost his job over the incident. "You can't take weapons out around children," the youth football program's director told The Wichita Eagle.

Wichita police are currently looking for any information leading to the whereabouts of the coach's attackers, who — if we have the story correct — took out the first weapons around the children.