LEXINGTON, KY. ? Playing dirty is OK, as long as you don’t get caught. There is no greater goal than winning. Yelling, screaming and carrying on are proper behavior on the sports field. Calling kids losers is motivating.

Those are the lessons in “Kicking & Screaming,” a box-office hit starring Will Ferrell as an overzealous soccer parent-coach.

It would be nice to think that his antics don’t reflect real life. But, as any parent whose child plays a sport can attest, competition can sometimes bring out the worst in grown-ups in any sport.

The majority of parents are well-behaved, said Mary Lynn Walsh, who coordinates coaches for the select arm of the Lexington (Ky.) Youth Soccer Assn. But, she said, “every team will have one or two parents who are mouths.”

She’s been both an organizer and a parent, and she recalls a game when the woman standing next to her started screaming to her son that he should take out the player with the ball. The player with the ball was Walsh’s son. “I turned to her and said, ‘That’s my son you are talking about.”‘

“Then I said, ‘I’m going to move because I am going to knock your lights out.”‘

Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.

Her league, like many, has a code of conduct. That code forbids unsportsmanlike behavior, such as making derogatory remarks, striking someone or using unauthorized noisemakers. Penalties can include ejection from a game or suspension from participating in league activities.

Rarely do things get so out of hand that they can’t be dealt with rationally. But twice in the 20 years that Walsh has been involved in soccer, parents have been banned from games and practices.

And if a coach acted like Ferrell’s character, she said, he wouldn’t last.

Dennis Sprague, a Lexington sports psychologist, said even parents with the best intentions can get a little wild. He suggests that if someone’s behavior is out of control, it’s best to go to a league official or someone involved in the organization and ask them to deal with it.

It can be difficult to get involved, said Sprague, who, with several other sports psychologists, has created a CD set called Preparing You to Be a Better Sports Parent. He said if a behavior is annoying you, it’s probably affecting others, especially the kids.

Kids generally get into sports to have fun. When parents become too invested, the fun quickly dissipates. It can even affect siblings when family life revolves around one talented child athlete and the whole crew spends every weekend traveling to tournaments.

It’s important, Sprague said, not to put too much pressure on a child to use sports as a way to get a scholarship. Academics and a social life also should be kept in balance.

Sometimes kids can’t find a way to tell their parents they don’t want to play any more, and they will subconsciously start to get hurt. If a child is not sleeping well, not doing well in school or worrying about the competition long before the game, something is usually amiss, he said.

About 75 percent of kids who play sports quit by the time they are 15, he said.

Kevin Reber, a Georgetown, Ky., parent, said it’s easy to see that parents mean well but can get overzealous.

“Everyone wants to see their child play well,” he said. People pour all their hopes and dreams into the child, especially if he or she is an only child or the firstborn.

Reber, president of Georgetown-Scott County Youth Soccer, said, “Everybody thinks, ‘Johnny is 6 years old, and he’s going to be the next superstar.”‘

As parents grow along with the child, they usually realize that if little Johnny is an accountant or a teacher instead of a sports idol, that’s just fine.

Most children want to please their parents, and when they don’t perform to parents’ expectations, they think they’ve let their parents down, he said. The best way to avoid that is not to play the next year.