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Incident With Fan
This might seem like it has an obvious answer, but if it does the answer has so far eluded me. Sorry for the length...
Working the 5th game of a 5 game set today at a 6 court facility. "Home" team is more physical than the other, puts "Visiting" team in bonus rather quickly after the second half begins. Home player picks up his fourth foul and during time out the player's mom comes on the court and tries to ask us what exactly her son is doing to be called for fouls. I'm ready to whack her with a T right there, but my partner waves me up and simply says to her, "He pushes, now get back in the stands."
Mom returns to the stands and then proceeds, with her husband, to rain abuse down on my partner and I the rest of the game. They are not being profane or getting personal in any way and my partner advises me to ignore them, which I do. Now here's where it gets interesting...
Being a multi-court facility, there are no locker rooms for us to escape to or leave our gear in. We have no choice but to run to the table, sign the score sheet, grab our gear and get the heck out of dodge. Unfortunately, we are not quite fast enough and the Dad catches us. He starts getting louder and louder as we walk away from him. We realize we're not going to make it to the door without this getting worse, so we make a beeline towards the nearest cluster of officials we see. Before we make it there, the Dad grabs my partner by the arm and attempts to pull him around and make my partner face him. Thankfully one of the officials we were heading to saw what was happening and got in between them. To make a long story short, our Supervisor wants my partner to press charges, etc.
My question is what do you do in a situation like that? Is there anything you can do?
Granted, I should have not have let the parents go on as they did during the game and in that sense I probably should not have acceded to my partner as much as I did, but you live and learn.
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