Emailing a coach
 

Did a game HS game last night. Coach said we applied rule wrong and swore he was right.

When I got home I looked up his email from HS website with a copied/pasted NFHS rule to prove I was correct.

Thoughts?

Don't do it. You made the call. You don't need to prove to him that you were right. What does that get you? Don't do it. I can see a response like,"Ok, you got that one right but you screwed up a bunch more." If you know you're right that should be good enough. If he asks you or your assigner brings it up, fine. Frankly, coaches usually move on to next game. You bringing it up without someone asking is more apt to cause hard feelings.

And emailing just isn't a good way to communicate something like this.

Everything is about what is allowed in your area. I would not do this and often do not care what a coach think anyway. The game is over, my responsibility to the coach is over. If the assignor wants some correspondence, I will give that to him if asked.

Peace

Please let me first say that all this stuff is local.

I would prefer that you email the assigner, lay it all out there, and let the assigner decide what to do with it. I'm an assigner for 24 schools and while I don't mind when an official contacts an AD or coach, I'd at least like to be copied on the conversation.

If it was just something non confrontational, with a coach you know fairly well, it would be ok. If it was confrontational in any way, let it go, imo. Doesn't matter if it's in black and white, you proving him wrong, which if it was contentious, why else would you being doing this, will only serve to further degrade the situation.

I agree with Rich. The coach deserves a respectful reply from your local Board, or from you, with their blessing.


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I don't know if I'd email the coach directly, but if I had a good enough relationship with the AD I might send him something like "Your coach wanted clarification on this rule, here it is, pass it along to him." I don't see any harm in that.

Just what positive would you expect to come from this?

If the coach WANTS clarification, fine. But sending him the rule to prove your right and he is wrong is a mistake. And phrasing it as you have above wont soften the blow if the coach hasnt specifically asked you to provide him the rule. Just not a good idea, imo

Let me preface this by saying, I think it completely depends on the relationship you have with a school or coaches, but where I work where its a different gym every night and coaches are always coming and going. But that being said...

To me this is no different than a coach saying, "I'll send you the video tomorrow so you can look at it"

If the video proves you're wrong, he/she is an ass for sending it.
If the video proves you're right, he/she won't send it and they're an ass for making that comment.

I'd rather just move on to the next game. More than likely if that coach is that passionate about the call, he's going to ask one of his "reffing" buddies and more than likely he will either get squared away or have a whole different perspective of why the call was missed.

In general its a bad idea IMO. The game is over, move on. Simply note the rules book reference and politely share it with the coach the next time you see him if its that big of a deal to you.

If you really feel the need to communicate the rule to the coach immediately then go through your assigner. As others have said check your local listings but I think thats sound advice anywhere. Here our assigner has explicitly said NOT to contact coaches directecly about things that happen in games. We are to go through him. This helps with consistency in messaging and avoids a personal back and forth between a coach and individual officials. Our rules interpreter would also likely get involved in rules application questions.

That said, there are some of us who based on experience and personal relationships with certain coaches could do something like this without issue. But that doesnt sound like the case here. I would strongly advise to let it go or go through the assinger.

I disagree with this. Rules application is entirely different than a judgement call, which is the likely source of a video reference. There should be little to no subjectivity with rules application where on judgement calls, even with video (especially the video of a HS game which will lack HD and multiple angles), there will be a degree of subjectivity.

Also, I don't see why a coach has to be an ass in both situations. Sure I've heard coaches say that in a condescending way. But I've also had coaches who have come up to me and say, "I saw the tape on the play I was bitchin about the other week and you were right." If the tape proves you kicked a call I don't think that makes the coach an ass. I think it means we kicked the call. And if it proves us right which happens more often then not, then the coach shouldnt have a problem admitting he was wrong.

Starting this season, my association has an agreement with coaches to share game video through Hudl. The purpose is purely to use it as a teaching tool for officials. Some officials do worry that coaches will want to use it against us but we had two meetings with a group of coaches to address this and it hasnt been an issue thus far. This is somewhat OT and probably worthy of its own thread but I think HS officials should be embracing video as a tool not as a reason to be advesarial with coaches.

Exactly. The hypothetical quotation implied that the coach asked. I just think it's a better idea to go through the AD in that situation.

I'm all for video as a teaching/learning tool. I have asked coaches for their video to go back and watch a game. My experience is that if a coaches uses the line, "I'll send you the video" on a judgement call, he's doing it to be an ass. Likewise I try to never say, "you'll see I'm right when you watch the film." It's just counter productive because you're right and we all have witnessed watching clips here, even with good video it's not always definitive.