Untied Shoelaces

[crosscountry55]

Has anyone noticed an increase lately in delays caused by players needing to tie their shoes?

Historically, I have always been very lenient on this, i.e. I give players the time they need during dead balls to take care of untied shoes. Sometimes I'll even direct them to do this during a dead ball if it appears they don't know (or don't care) that their shoes are untied.

However, incidences of untied shoes seem to be on the rise, leading me to believe that either A) kids really suck at tying their shoes these days, or B) they're using the shoe-tying delay as a chance to catch the team's breath---a free mini-time out, if you will.

During a set of AAU games yesterday, for the first time I had a partner who actually told a few players "this is the last time we're stopping the game for your shoes, ok?" It never came to it, but I guess for an additional incident he could have directed the player to leave the game as a means to help remind the player that he was serious.

I have not yet gone to such extremes, but the shoe-tying delays are starting to annoy me. Has anyone else noticed this trend? I'm trying to ascertain whether this is a local, regional or national epidemic.