In mid February, there was an incident in my area of assault on an official with a disturbingly inept response by the league and the section. BV game. Team A, playing at home has just lost to team B. A1 is so frustrated that he picks up the basketball and fires it at an official as hard as he could throw it. Official never sees it coming, gets hit square in the face and collapses to the ground, momentarily blacking out. A crowd gathers around the 3 officials, which is scary to them at that point, as the potential for escalation was there, but the crowd was trying to help and ultimately the officials get escorted to the locker room.
In spite of felony laws prohibiting assault on officials, the player in question received nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Because a certain box was not checked on a game report, the section only suspended the player for ONE GAME, the standard here for any ejection. The school, decided to double the suspension to TWO GAMES (it should also be noted that since Team A had already clinched its league title that both games were essentially meaningless). TWO GAMES with no further disciplinary action for assaulting an official when doing so to anyone else probably would've led to expulsion. What's worse is that the player is back now, playing with his team which is now in the section final and bound for the state tournament.
Here is the response from the league commissioner: BVAL Commissioner Barbara Beard said she was satisfied with the punishment.
``The referee didn't send in an ejection notification, which would have resulted in a one-game suspension,'' Beard said. ``[School A] doubled that penalty. . . . I believe they handled the situation very professionally.''
In fact the ejection notification was sent in, but a box on it, despite a lengthy discription was left unchecked.
To me, this is an outrage, and there is talk in our group of a possible boycott of School A's games next year. How would you feel about a boycott, and what actions would all of you take in a similar circumstance. By the way the section commissioner's name is Nancy Blaser and her e-mail is:
[email protected] if you would like to send her an e-mail voicing your displeasure at this turn of events.