Sure, if its the first game ever for a coach in a 8u team.

Otherwise, they know (or should know, and if they don't telling them about it isn't going to make any difference).

and, if they can't deal with your judgment about what's "fair" in this kind of situation (because it's rarely going to happen in any game that "matter" -- yeah, they all "matter" to someone), then they don't have to stick around for the rest of the game.

Also, YOU will be ready for this more in the future. Unless it's an outright fastbreak opportunity, you're going to realize right when that whistle begins (in most cases) that it's not coming from your court.

That's when you immediately growl (my preferred method with a whistle in mouth), "Play on!" before anybody can really relax.

Of course, this works best if you're trail and the ball is up high. But unless you're mid-shot or mid-drive, you're going to be able to head off stopping the game an awful lot, which, of course, you definitely want to do if you have 4 or 6 in a row.

And parents and players will typically understand.

All this talk about the players messing up, what about the officials?

Oh, how I love you MAYB events. Was traveling this last summer and knew an assigner running one of these and he'd asked if I'd do a few. Sure, why not? What could possibly go wrong. Sounded easy enough.

They turned a court into four courts with nothing to divide the court except table crew and players getting hit by stray balls.

Anyway, I had a game where I was the lead and the trail and the trail for another court were right next to each other. Heard a whistle so I looked up and of course my first thought was why doesn't this guy have his arm up. Bang, boom, boom, Bang right in front of me and I had to ask him for help on what happened. Had to hear it from the fans for the rest of the game. :p

Play was right in front of me with a great look. Only possible way to not see it was spacing out looking somewhere else.

When I've been in those situations, sometimes I'll suggest to my partner that we try to differentiate our whistle from what we are hearing on the other court(s). Something like a quick double tweet or something like that. It doesn't always work, but sometimes it does.

Us soccer folk carry whistles with different pitches for multi-field use . . . not so easy in hoops -- not to mention in soccer the other whistle is farther away . . . . muti-courts together strke me as nuts, but I guess that's how you get more $ running the tournament . . .