[Rizzo21]

Originally posted by SMEngmann
Although I wasn't there, I'd venture to make an educated guess that the hostile fan behavior was directly related to the behavior of the coach. Allow too much rope, and there are many ways to get hanged. Fans take their cues from the coach, if he's ranting, raving and berating, chances are his fans will feel and act based on his reactions, regardless of the activity on the court. Same with players. In a situation with a hostile coach, particularly in a sub varsity game, someone's gotta deal with him either through communication, or a technical foul if it persists. A lot of JV coaches emulate what they see on TV and will push the envelope as far as they can. Too many officials are unwilling to deal with them when they get out of line and that just causes problems in their games and throughout the season. I'm not saying look to T, just enforce the rules and do what you can to control the game. You have a hard enough time controlling one coach, let alone trying to deal with fans too.

You are dead on with that. As a spectator, I did the same thing (watch the coach's reaction). My very next game was with this team/coach but we knew it was going to be a blowout (by this team). My partner was experienced and usually did varsity games (this was Freshman) and communicated with that coach before the game about the type of game we were going to call (EXTREME advantage/disadvantage only). He had no problem with that and the game was a blowout as expected. It was no fun at all to do this game when one team was so bad but at least he never said a word or argued with anything.