I guess I should have asked what state first, eh?
Trust me, I've seen plenty of games from the stands, especially recently, as since I'm a Dixie District Director, I can't umpire the tourneys (would be rather silly if I was umpiring and we had a call on the field protested, they took it to committee, couldn't resolve it, called their director and my phone rang on the field!)
And if I sounded like I was on a high horse, I apologize - I don't think I sounded that way.
About the pitchers, if a girl pitches 3 innings in a tourney game, she cannot pitch in the following game. So MOST (not all) coaches only pitch the girls 2 innings. Also, they can only pitch 11 in the tourney - so unless this was a 3-team tourney, I suspect many of the pitchers were running out of innings by the final (which might be part of the reason for the 21-21 score as well!), so this pitcher may have been the bottom of the barrel for this team.
In any case, at 10U, I would expect umpires to be rather lenient on illegal pitches, and certainly if they are GOING to call it, call it the first time they see it.
My last dig, however, has to be to the implied assertion that this call cost them the game. What about the first 21 runs? And if they had allowed about 3 runs an inning all game, one might suspect that the runner already on third had a pretty good probability of scoring in the normal course of things.
I do feel your pain though. Were I the Dist Director at that game, I would have been grimacing at the call myself.