[Mark Padgett]

For a few years, I've worked a MS tournament called the President's Day Tournament here in the Portland area. Boys teams from around the country come in to play. This year, there's over 350 games in three days. I wasn't aware of it until I got to one of the 20 gym floors being used yesterday but they expanded the teams to include 3rd and 4th graders! Yeah, that's right, 3rd grade traveling teams!

I was assigned a game at this level because I have experience training HS kids to work that level in our local rec league. Big difference, however. During the game, the coaches spent almost all their time yelling at the top of their lungs at their kids. The rest of the time, they were yelling at me and my partner. It was disgusting.

I T'd up the coach from Seattle (the other team was from Eugene). One of his players fouled out (I think it was his son) and when I went over to inform him of this, he said, "That wouldn't be the case if you and your partner knew what the he77 you were doing out there". WHACK!

Oh yeah - his team lost by 15. Games are 14 minute stop time halves at that level in this tourney.

More oh yeah - the spectators were worse than the coaches.