[fiasco]

Originally Posted by JoeT

Well, get ready to attack me, I guess...

I know how you all hate us coaches sometimes, and we often deserve it. I'm not condoning the coach's reaction in this situation, but please try to understand where it came from and to own some of your own mismanagement that contributed to the situation you describe. By your own description, you're picking and choosing to set aside certain rules and calls for whatever reasons you have. Then, from this coach's perspective, you choose to enforce another rule that hurts his team. That is tremendously frustrating. As a coach who regularly works with very underpowered teams, I am painfully aware how a choice not to call handchecks ("because it's a JV game") gives a distinct advantage to the team that was more powerful in the first place.

If it's a handcheck - on my kid or on theirs - please call it. I often feel that my choice to teach legal "keep-your-hands-off-and-move-your-feet" defense puts my kids at a disadvantage in games where officials decide that a hand (or armbar) on the hip is going to be OK that day.

Not to mention, I've had at least one situation where this was happening, and I earned a tech for chirping about it. Nevertheless, after the tech, the officials started getting the opponents' hands off. I hate having to "take one" just to get the game called by the rules, but I have to admit, getting that tech improved the game for my players.

Believe me when I say if I had called every single handcheck in that game, pretty much every girl would have fouled out. Would that have been good "management"? Then the coach would have been upset with me for "not letting them play."

Can't win for losing with you guys...