Player and Referee Brawl

[IUgrad92]

Originally Posted by SC Official

I am with you and am so tired of people acting like it's so outrageous for us to get emotional every once in awhile when these high schoolers and "coaches" (I use that term lightly for this kind of basketball) cross the line.

It makes me laugh how these travel ball teams and tournament directors want better officiating yet don't want to pay up and only use 2-person crews. And then when good varsity or college officials come work the games, they get upset when they can't get away with what usual officials for these tournaments let them get away with.

I'm not sure anyone here feels it's outrageous, however; give me an example when getting emotional as an official has resolved a situation or has made it better? To me it is not different in getting into a debate with a coach thinking you are going to make him/her see things your way in the heat of the moment. It just doesn't happen or work that way..... We have to rise above and typically disengage, no matter how off-base a coach is. We have tools given to us to use for these situations. Those tools should handle 99% of the situations we see.

I just saw this past Sunday an older/experienced official get into a back-and-forth with a coach, started getting emotional about it, and ended up whacking the coach, 100% because he got emotional. In this particular situation, he easily could have just told the coach what he had and walked away, but instead made it about who could puff their chest out further and how he was right and the coach was wrong. It was just flat out ugly and no one in the gym was very impressed with either of them.

There is normally more than enough, if not too much, emotion already involved in youth sports. As sporting officials, I think it behooves us to not add to that element of the game, rather an opposite, steady, controlled influence whenever possible. I believe the official in this OP could have been that opposite and much needed force. 80% of the video wouldn't exist if he had.....