[coach41]

It's been a LONG week. Not only have I been fighting a cold, I scheduled myself to referee games (mostly high school, but a few adult league) this WHOLE week. Fortunately, my adult league games got cancelled giving a one day reprieve mid-week.

However, as it always seems to happen, when you get to your last game, those are always the hardest ones. My game saturday was a frosh/soph boys game with a lady partner I'd never worked with.

The game was a tough one. Both squads were not super talented but were about the same level. There was a lot of hard screens, hand checking, and bodies flying everywhere. Just based on the numbers I can vaguely remember, we must have called 35 to 40 fouls the whole game.

The double-technical/player disqualification scenario occurred with about 4 minutes left in the 4th quarter.

One of visiting squad's players (#5) was called for a blocking foul by my partner. As my partner went to report the foul, I noted that #5 was screaming mad (couldn't hear what he was saying as there were a lot of fans there for a frosh/soph game) and that he had to be restrained by his teammates.

I gave the kid a couple of seconds to see if he would cool down. The kid didn't cool down so I calmly issued a technical foul. The visiting coach then proceeded to sub the kid out to avoid further issues.

So, as I'm about to report the technical foul, I notice the kid TOOK OFF HIS JERSEY on the way to the bench. I immediately issued the second technical foul. All in all, the home squad shot six technical fouls (2 for the foul (double bonus), and 4 for the technicals). The visiting squad eventually won 49-46.

So, some things in my mind were:

1. Comments on the first technical? My partner and I talked about it after the game. She thought it was the right thing to do.

2. On the player disqualification: For some reason, I thought it meant the player should be moved off the bench. So I told the visiting team coaches to get the player off the bench. Obviously, in looking up the rule book, I was wrong. The player is disqualified to the bench.

So, my last question is: Is there any reason to dismiss "bench players" to the locker room? I kept poking around the rule book earlier and didn't see anything.

Look forward to people's comments.