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Originally Posted by JugglingReferee
No, about the kid burning his hand.... that might be too much.  |
First of all, I never said let your kid "burn" his hand. I have a 3-year old and I've watched him touch the stove after being told multiple times not to because it is hot. He touched it, pulled his hand back, cried for a few minutes, and was perfectly fine physically after about 2-3 minutes. More importantly, not only does he not touch the stove anymore, but when I tell him something is going to burn, he remembers that experience. So let it be known that I'm not advocating burning little kids.
Secondly to address Rich, I'm fully aware of the principles of preventative officiating. I just don't feel this is a situation that is in need of it. I think this is a coaching issue (preventative coaching anyone?). I feel preventative officiating is for alerting kids to your style of officiating when they become careless with little aspects of the game, i.e. not being on the line, kids coming close to late hits, equipment issues, just to name a few. In my mind, prompting a captain to change his decision is like granting a TO, then realizing it was the teams last, and then asking the captain if he really wants to use his last time out. If he says "whoops, didn't realize it was our last", are you going to say "okay, let's start the clock and you can have your timeout back". I doubt it if you've already stoped the clock and given your signal.
Otherwise to clarify, I fully agree with what everyone else has said about giving the choices in a manner that avoids the dreaded double kicking situation, but once a captain has made his decision, I'm not going to prompt him to change it (or in effect fix his mistakes). I also agree that there is an age component to this issue, but I think by high school, not only should the kids understand what is going on, the coach should also be very clear in his expectations of the captains at the coin toss.