[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

It is a shame that you had to be exposed to this kind of behavior but Hawks Coach is correct if this was a club sponsored tournament. But I have been officiating in AAU National Championship and National Invitational Championship tournaments for both boys and girls since 1993, I can assure you from personal experience that if that had happened in a AAU Girls NC or NIC, the officials would have been blamed for the coach's behavior and would not have been protected by the AAU Girls' National Director of Basketball Officials. In 1995 at the 14U/15U NC, my partner were cornered our dressing roome by three coaches and three parents of the losing team of the game we had just officiated. To this day we do not know how the people got into our dressing room. We could not get out of the room to get the site manager and it got pretty ugly because when we tried to get past them we were threatened with physical violence and they would have us arrested for attacking them. I still officiate AAU nationals but AAU wants to protect its image instead of doing the correct thing. The Director of Officials and I do not speak to each other to this very day, because he knows that I will rip him a new anus over the 1995 situation.

You just have to pick your battles and lets face it, until there is a fundamental change in attitude by players, parents, coaches, and tournament administrators, these situations will continue to happen. Especially tournament administrators, they do not want the public to know that they allow that kind of unacceptable social behavior at their sporting events. And the reason why is BIG MONEY. Tournament administrators LOVE money more than they have the intestatinal fortitude to do the correct thing.