[WhistlesAndStripes]

Originally Posted by kwv001

I am a former Indiana high school basketball official that had to give up officiating about 10 years ago because of a job change that had a travel schedule that was too unpredictable to commit to a basketball schedule. Now that I don't travel as much, I am seriously considering "coming out of retirement" and beginning to officiate again next season. I enjoy reading many of the discussions on this forum, and they have made me realize how much I miss being involved in the game. This topic, concerning table behavior in particular, caught my attention because of something I witnessed this season at one of my daughter's freshman games.

I have volunteered my time at my daughter's school the past three years as the official timer for their home games. As a fomer official I certainly understand the concept of the table officials being an extension of the night's crew, but the mother that kept the book for our team this season had a problem with that. There were a couple of times early in the season when she was pretty vocal in disagreeing with a call that had been made, and I reminded her that when she chose to sit at the table she gave up a few things, one of which was the "privilege" of yelling at the officials.

However, I wasn't ready for what happened at a game about 3 weeks ago. About 3-4 minutes into the first quarter, her daughter fell to the floor, with no foul call made. Convinced that her daughter could not possibly have fallen without being pushed, she yells across the floor to the official about the no call. As her daughter is a little slow to get up and get back down the floor, the mother then turns to our bench and starts yelling for the coach to call a timeout. For whatever reason, the coach does call a timeout. As the nearer official comes to the table to report the timeout, our scorer gets up and walks across the floor to the far baseline where the official is standing that she felt should have called a foul and proceeds to let him know exactly what she thinks about his no call. I quickly located the AD and motioned for him to come to the table, where I informed him that the lady on the floor berating the official was his official scorer. Needless to say, he quickly intervened and escorted her out of the gym and she did not return to the table the rest of the season!

You have to wonder what goes through a person's mind when they do something that stupid. I can't imagine how her daughter must have felt, watching!

I can give you a pretty good idea based on something that happened to one of our football officials in a Pop Warner game, kids were around age 11-12. One of the team moms on the sideline keeping track of how many plays each player was in the game got after an official pretty good, accusing him of being unfair and all that. This happened sometime in the first half of the game. At halftime, as the kids were leaving the field, the officials were talking to some of the players asking them how it seemed to be going, and the kids were fine with everything. Then, one kid came up to the official that had been ragged on by the mom and said, "And Ref, I'd like to apologize for my mom's actions." If I was a parent and heard my child had made a statement like that, I would be completely and utterly embarassed.