Disgusting Coach

[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

Originally Posted by JRutledge

Hate to break this to you, but Catholic schools are sometimes the worst when it comes to language and attitude. I work a couple of leagues that are either all Catholic or mostly Christian and I have had to address more language in those leagues than anywhere else. I doubt seriously that is going to change anything Calhoun does or would do in the future.

Welcome to college basketball as well. Many things said if you look at language is often not for the immature ears. And many D3 and D2 schools are private parochial schools. IJS.

Peace

First some background information. I had already been officiating basketball for 24 years when I started officiating H.S. soccer. My first name is my god father's (who was Jewish and one of my dad's closest friends) first name; I have a great-great, great grand aunt on my maternal grandmother's side of my family who was Jewish; and four of my closet friends from my H.S. days are Jewish including one who was an Italian Jew (remember that Shylock in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice was Jewish). And Italians (remember that I am from Youngstown, Ohio) and those of the Jewish faith have much common ground (some of you may want to Google Mafia, Meyer Lansky, and Youngstown, Ohio, LOL)

Back to soccer. The very first soccer game that I ever officiated was a the FR game of a FR, JV, VAR triple header between two of well known all male Catholic high schools, whose names shall not be given to protect the guilty which started at 11:00am that Saturday morning (remember the day of the week is important). The Home team was a local H.S. and the Visitors were from another Ohio metropolitan area. My partner was a 4th year soccer (that only sport he officiated) official and he was the R for the game and he was being evaluated for his Class 2 to 1 exam.

As usual the spectators were seated on the opposite side of the field from the team benches with the fans sitting opposite their schools. Since my partner was the R he was on the team bench side for the field and I was on the spectator side of the field. And it turned out that the Visitor's fans were some of the most obnoxious fans I have ever encountered in all of the sports that I have officiated or umpired.

The Home team was attacking the goal in front of the Visitors bench in the first half. About 15 minutes into the game V1 attempted to tackle H1 and committed a foul which I called but in the process of attempting the tackle V1 suffered a very serious knee and the game was stopped for about 15 minutes to attend to the injured player. During this time the Visitor's fans realized that not only was their player was hurt but that I had called a foul on him. At the point a father stood up and yelled at the top of his lungs: "Jesus Christ!! What a terrible call!!" At this point I did not follow my own rules about engaging unruly fans. I turned to the spectators and calmly announced to the Visitor's section: "I am Jewish and today is my Sabbath. And I am appalled and shocked that a parent of a student-athlete of the outstanding Catholic high school of (insert guilty school's name here) would take his Lord's name in vain." The crowd went silent and neither side complained about the officiating the rest of the game. The evaluator was English and immigrated to the U.S. after The War, told me at half time that he couldn't stop laughing because of the great way I had handled the fans.

Unfortunately, my god father had passed on years before, so I never got to share the story with him, but my dad and my four H.S. buddies thought it was funny as hell.

MTD, Sr.