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"Our coach discussed it with blue and got nowhere. Blue said that F4 didnt have the ball, and everything was just incidental contact. Meanwhile, the father of the hurt girl is really upset about his kid being knocked down like that and had some heated, but clean words with the umpire. The brother of F4 was entirely out of line, but he cussed at blue for making such a lousy call,"
I am not going to exonerate the young ump for her reply (but, wow, would I have liked to have been there to see/hear that), but I think that she handled herself pretty well up to that point. I think that she probably had a correct call and she took a lot of abuse from adults. When I train young umps, as much as possible I try to stick around the fields "to protect" them from the adult coaches and fans. These people can be brutal and intimidating towards teenage umpires. They tick me off because they are not going to pay league entry fees high enough to hire adult umps, but expect the kids to perform as we would.
Secondly I get very angry when I hear parents and coaches screaming for a penalty everytime a girl gets banged around. Sorry folks, but contact will be part of softball. Some of it legal, some illegal. An umpire has to have solid knowledge of the rules, and Solomon like judgment to sort it out - interference, obstruction, incidental, or malicious. He makes a decision based on the type of the game, the skill of the players, the attitiudes of the players, and his view of the play. But the fans, who know nothing, just scream for justice! It's OK to take a 60 mph fastball in the ribs; that's "taking it for the team!" But knock a girl off her feet, and they want blood.
I've seen or coached hundreds of girl's softball and basketball games and I know that girls can handle contact. I've seen some basketball games that get absolutely brutal under the basket. But I have never seen "meanness" in the game. Though I've seen malicious contact many times in boys baseball, I personally have never seen it in softball. And I suspect the runner in our subject story was simply protecting herself. Note that crossing arms in front of the chest is how girls are taught to protect themselves when setting a screen in basketball (whereas boys are taught to cross their arms in front of the genital area). I don't see it as a football play, but a basketball reaction.
And that's my 2 cents.
WMB
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