When Liberty High School graduate, Matt Leon, and his friends, Zach Schellenger, Andrew Lentini, and Chris Talbott, walked into Mark and Julie’s Homemade Ice Cream in West Orange, N.J. this past fall, what they also walked into was an episode of ABC-TV’s “What Would You Do?”

“We overheard a guy raising his voice a little bit,” said Leon. “He was telling his son that he wasn’t getting ice cream because losers don’t get ice cream.”

Unbeknown to Leon and his friends, they were being watched by hidden cameras, and they were being tested with a made-up scenario in the ice cream shop to see what they would do, if anything, when exposed to a questionable situation.

In the scenario, the son, named Aiden, hadn’t performed well in a Little League Baseball game that day. His father, also the coach of the team, was treating two other players to ice cream, but not Aiden.

Much to the show’s host, John Quinones’s delight, it was apparent that Leon, now a college sophomore, Schellenger, and Lentini play baseball for Seton Hall University. Talbott is the team manager.

“How can you be my son?” asked the father. “The way you played out there today, it’s embarrassing. Ice cream is for winners, and you’re a loser.”

A noticeable look of discomfort crossed Leon’s face.

“I kind of had some suspicion, but playing Little League Baseball, I knew parents like that,” Leon said.

When Aiden’s father walked away, Leon and Schellenger engaged the boy in conversation by asking if he was OK and reassuring him that having a bad game is no big deal.

Then Leon did what others may or may not have done. He bought ice cream for Aiden.

“You can tell him I got it for you,” Leon told the boy. “Yeah, he can yell at us.”

When Aiden’s father returned, Leon jumped in again.

“I felt like [Aiden] deserved it because if my father treated me that way, I wouldn’t want to play baseball,” said Leon. “Zach and I were a little angry with the guy, and I wanted to explain myself.”

Leon did not back down, telling the father that the lesson he was trying to teach his son was not a good lesson at all.

That’s when Quinones entered the ice cream shop.

“Once he came in, I knew. I was a little relieved I did something, and that I didn’t have to have my face blurred out,” Leon laughed.

After, Leon and his friends were in shock.

“One of the producers said he thought we would do something when we walked in,” said Leon. “John Quinones was a nice guy. He made me feel comfortable.”

Leon contacted his parents and his sister right away, but the episode would air three months later.

“It was neat to see myself on TV and pretty funny as well,” Leon said. “Random people would come up to Zach and me, saying they appreciated us doing what we did.”

Leon and his friends have returned to Mark and Julie’s Homemade Ice Cream since, but there have been no hidden cameras of which they have been aware.

“There was never really any fame, but it’s all kind of gone now,” said Leon.

The episode can be accessed on YouTube with the title, What Would You Do?: Sore Loser Dad Refuses to Treat Son.