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Brett,
I was going to be the first person to reply to your situation when it first came on the board and my first comment was going to be, "Boy, are you going to open a can of worms."
I was going to tell you I know how you feel - After umpiring and officiating for 5-6 years, I got talked into coaching an "elite" 13-14 year old baseball team. At a tournament in another town, I had a play where my first baseman fielded a low throw cleanly (with his foot on the bag), but sat down in front of the basepath, thus getting run over by the batter-runner and dropping the ball.
A young umpire (17 or 18) came up with a safe call since the ball was on the ground. Unfortunately, my reaction was the same as my parents - loud disbelief, then "oh, well," it's over. Move on. After the game, I had a discussion with the young man about that play and we agreed that a runner that was already out couldn't make himself safe again by running into the first baseman and knocking the ball out. I told the young man that I screwed up the worst, because I became a "coach/spectator" as far as yelling, instead of approaching him calmly and asking him to give me his interpretation of the play.
Looking back at that and looking at your situation, you are in a no win situation because as a coach, any constructive criticism you try to give a fellow referee will not be accepted as that - constructive. The one thing I do like to hear is that your players are not the ones to talk to the officials, that is the coach's job.
I still umpire in the summers, so I don't referee at team camps or the AAU tournaments; partly because of the umpiring and partly because officiating basketball year round would cause me to burn out and that would be a disservice to the kids playing, my family and myself.
Who knows, down the road, after you've been officiating for 10-15 years, maybe you can get something done in your association as far as weeding out those officials that are just there for the money or the power trip. Although, like quite a few of the replies said, sometimes you have to take whoever is on the court and just bite your tongue.
Good luck, though.
Troy
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