[Mark Padgett]

Yesterday, we had our end-of-season pizza party for all the refs that work our local kids rec league. There's about 40 of us and about 30 came to the party, with 12 of those being HS kids who are in our "training program". Everyone told stories of things that happened during the season that ended yesterday.
One of the stories that kind of freaked me out was from a gal who is in her second year with us. She's a college sophomore. She said she gave a flagrant techincal to a 3rd grade boy for using profanity after a call. Apparently, he yelled out the "F word"! When she reported it to the table and then went to inform the coach of the ejection (profanity in 3rd-8th grade games in our league is an automatic flagrant T), he said he has had the same problem with the kid at practices and speaking to the kid's parents about it made no difference since they use quite a bit of it themselves.

She told him he could have taken playing time away from the kid until he learns his lesson and the coach said he never thought of that.

Most of the stories were positive about the kids but there were a few about really bad behavior, including a fight between three kids on each team. And this was a girls 5th-6th grade game.

Oh well, life goes on.