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Coach-
I didn't make it through all the posts, so if I'm repeating, apologies. I've coached and parented and Jr high and below, I played in HS, and I reffed MS as an untrained ref back in HS.
A few thoughts:
Don't waste your time worrying about what the refs are going to call at this level. The variety of skills, training, styles are going to be such that the simple fact is it's going to vary. And it is going to vary from oh-my-god-horrible to so-so. You are going to have refs who call based on myths, on what they saw on TV last week, and what they remember from when they played. Live with it. (Even if your MS league decided to up the pay, the simple fact is that the best refs have more fun doing higher level games and are going to do that even if the pay is the same.)
Even better officials often have trouble adjusting as the level of play can vary dramatically. My son's 8th grade CYO team (which is pretty decent) was playing in a tournament where the game before had two attoricious teams. The refs had to be lax about travelling, etc., between these two unskilled teams or it would have been a whistle fest from which the boys would have learned nothing and had no fun. Our game was more skilled and competitive -- it took the refs several minutes to readjust to the skill level of that game. It's just the nature of the age.
What does that mean as a coach. It means you need to teach your players:
*How to play through contact -- there are simply going to be days when a lot of contact is allowed and they have to deal with and just keep playing
*How to avoid contact that might be called as a foul when they are on defense
*How to adjust to what the refs are calling today
*How to play the game and focus on playing not the refs
Sometimes you just need to mutter the serenity prayer under your breath ("grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change . . . .")
At the end of the day, I think far too many coaches (and I am very able to be guilty of this, and have even this season) can get too focussed on the calls and the refs to the detriment of the players. If we focus on the kids on our team, and on teaching them skills and how to work as a team, those bad and inconsistent calls are going to balance out.
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