[REFANDUMP]

What this kid did was wrong, in my opinion he definitely kicked AT the defender, but I don't think he MEANT to kick him in the face. In my opinion, he quickly realized what had happened and wanted to check and see if the defender was alright. He should be charged with a technical foul for the kicking action, but in my opinion that is all. It appears these are middle school aged kids, and where I would disagree with the league director/veteran official is in the fact that he suspects that kids this age would react to a situation like this in the same way that older players would. I don't think that's necessarily true. I suspect that the kid did learn a valuable lesson about keeping his cool on the floor and hopefully he and his parents write a letter of apology to the injured player. For the league director to act like there was NOTHING wrong, sounds like an excuse to not to have to deal with a bad situation.