Want to know which soccer moms are rumored to be sleeping with which youth soccer coaches? Or perhaps you have an opinion on which is the vilest and most hated girls team around. Or maybe you just want to share your thoughts about the incompetence of a referee and drop in a mention of his race or perceived sexual orientation.

MICHAEL MULVEY / DMN

Since founding TurfMonster.com in 2004, former pro soccer player Matthew Shipley has seen the site grow to 18,000 members.

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Well, we can tell you just where to go, pal – how about Turf Monster? It's a Web site where aficionados of highly competitive North Texas youth soccer can get up-to-the-minute scores and field conditions and promote worthwhile fundraising projects.

Or you can go there to savor the latest gossip, rumor-mongering or good old-fashioned bashing. You can passively read what others have to say in the forums or you can actively post, making it a different kind of participant sport.

Note: Even if a forum opens with a post complimenting a team or a player, you can turn it ugly with a follow-up post questioning the validity of the kind words. And off it will spiral.

Tip: There is far more vitriol on posted items about girls issues than boys. And posters, almost all of whom are parents who have invested lots of money and plenty of time, seem to lose enthusiasm for the site as their child prodigies grow older.

"It's a place for pure foolishness and pure information," says Reagan White of Arlington, father of two soccer-playing daughters. He has been a Turf Monster member since 2005 and posts under the screen name "Shotshagger." "But it's really the best source for scuttlebutt out there."

There are similar sites pandering to other youth sports that boast teams that can be called "competitive," "select," "showcase" or "travel." One hockey site, for example, has threads titled "team managers from hell," "team out of control" and "... rumors." At basketball sites, folks seem content to talk about on-court issues such as underhanded recruiting of players and debate who has put together the best AAU teams.

But fans of other sports just don't seem to have the same posting joie de vivre as the Turf Monster crowd in youth soccer-crazed North Texas, where 195,000 boys and girls play the game.

"There was a post this week on the boys side in which one dad told another the make and model of his car and the last three letters on his license plate," said Todd Welch of Heath, who is better known as "Plantit" in the Turf Monster world and has two sons who play. "The dad said, 'If you want to meet me in a parking lot, we can settle this.' "

The bone of contention?

The possible breakup of a team composed of 13-year-old boys.

From the post: "We can settle this Brooklyn Style ... This guy is a pain and talks about other kids. He crossed the line when he talked about mine and I can't wait to see him personally."

Shawn Summey, a long-time Turf Monster participant who has evolved into a forum moderator, contends it was from just another all-type, no-action poster.

"It never translates into violence because I guess most of the parents are from the upper end of the socio-economic scale," Summey said. "But lawsuits are always being threatened. And then one of the lawyer dads or moms will post all the reasons it would be a frivolous lawsuit and everything seems to go away."

TurfMonster.com was the brainchild of Matthew Shipley, a 32-year-old graphic designer who played soccer at South Grand Prairie High and professionally in Iceland and was once a member of the Dallas Burn reserve squad. He launched the site in 2004 "almost as a joke." He started with three members.

Today, the site has 18,000 members, 12,000 of whom have posted to the forum bulletin boards. Turf Monster averages 2.5 million page views a month. The numbers are not mind-boggling in the Internet world, but Shipley hopes to keep growing them. He says the site doesn't make money, and he relies on volunteers like Summey to help guide it.

In a perfect world, Shipley envisions TurfMonster becoming a more prim and proper social networking site. But he admits that, at least for now, it is the forums that drive the engine.

"It's just nasty out there," Shipley said. "That's why Turf Monster exists in North Texas."

Web site etiquette forbids the use of players' names and discourages identifying them by number. Describing a player by position, hair color, body type and skill set is perfectly acceptable.

Richard Lapchick, founder of the Center for the Study of Sport and Society at Northeastern University and currently director of the DeVos Sport Business Management program at the University of Central Florida, had never heard of Turf Monster but bemoaned the existence of the "visceral" online forums.

"It's a new and unwelcome addition that further erodes sportsmanship in youth sports," he said. "It's not an unexpected evolution. But it is discouraging."

Welch, who coached recreational soccer and has served as a parent manager in select, says the site is an outlet for parents who have sacrificed time and money for youth soccer. "We are competitive parents who have bred competitive kids, and many of us are sometimes cocky and arrogant and pushy," he said. "But we don't mean anything by it."

In fact, the hardcore posters have come to know one another by introducing themselves at games by their screen names.

"You try to figure out who someone is by what teams they talk about, where they post and how they act at games," said Arlington's White, who is a freelance writer. "It's not that hard."

Some clubs, including the powerful Dallas Texans, have tried to discourage parents from actively participating on the site, Shipley said. "Parents just changed their screen names and came right back to us," he said. "Most of the people who visit our site are Texans parents."

Shipley says he knows what he knows because many of his former Burn teammates and friends coach at the major clubs in the area. He speaks to them regularly. He believes his site has attracted such a passionate following because it is anti-establishment.

"The clubs are so powerful that people usually have to succumb to their whims," he said. "People need an outlet when they don't like a coach or think they are not getting what they signed up for or not getting their money's worth."

Shipley will order a forum to be taken down if he deems it inappropriate or libelous. He is not a lawyer but has consulted attorneys.

Twice there have been threads accusing coaches of sleeping with players' mothers. Both times, after investigating, including talking to the moms and the coaches, Shipley found other parents on the teams guilty of starting rumors because they were jealous of playing time.

As for the forum that posed the question asking about the most-hated team in different age groups, it attracted 4,500 views in less than two weeks.

Then Shipley pulled it.

"It just got too filthy," he said. "I have language filters, but there are too many ways around it."

And which team was it?

Shipley mentioned the team's name and added it was a '99 squad. "It was unbelievable," he said.

The girls were 9 and 10 years old.