Thread: T'ed Up?
View Single Post
  #33 (permalink)  
Old Thu Jun 03, 2004, 06:09pm
rainmaker rainmaker is offline
Official Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Portland, Oregon
Posts: 9,466
Send a message via AIM to rainmaker
Quote:
Originally posted by Jurassic Referee
Tell you what. Somewhere down the line, you try spending literally hundreds of hours each year recruiting, training, assigning, evaluating and mentoring referees. Do it for about, oh, 20 or 25 years too. Then you sit down EVERY SINGLE YEAR with a bunch of these referees- great,young men and women- and listen to why they are giving up officiating as "not being worth the abuse that we have to take". Give it a try, guys. Let's see how much patience you end up having with bozos like Kaliix that obviously do not respect officials or the job that the officials are trying to do.
This is the crux of the matter. Let's face facts. New refs need training and they need opportunities to make mistakes. Even experienced refs have bad days every now and then. It's the abuse and mis-treatment that gets stacked onto those bad days that makes the situation intolerable.

When I was reffing a lot of middle school girls games (last month!), I would toss anyone who stepped out onto the floor to yell at me, unless it was to get my attention for a time-out in a very noisy gym. Talk about aggressive and scary -- someome coming toward you, yelling, is definitely over the top.

Kalix, the problem we're having here is that you came in asking a question, and you didn't like the answer so now you're trying to convince us to change our minds. Several people have agreed with you that the calls may have been bad, that you might have had good reason to be frustrated, that there have been some responses on this board that weren't diplomatic. Even these folks who agree with you this much are saying that stepping out onto the floor to yell such a harsh comment at a ref is out of line. It's just too much.

You need to see this more as a chance to teach your players a lesson about magnanimity, and less as a chance to "legally get in the ref's pocket." What your girls ended up doing was losing any chance to gain any basketball knowledge, because the T from the ref took their attention away from the game and the play, and put it on you and your words and actions. That's just not good coaching. The coaches who end up with players who go on in the game later in life are the ones who say to the girls, "Okay, it feels like the calls aren't going our way, but that's just the game. How are we going to get around their post player? How can we get the ball ahead of the defense? Who can dribble a little faster? Let's try that new play we've been working on. Etc..."

You already knew your team had little chance to win. So screw "win". You concentrate on learn, improve, grow. Let the refs concentrate on fair, consistent and even.