Captain

[Kansas Ref]

I remember back when I first started officiating ; it was 7th grade girls a & b gamesets. My partner [the Referee] was a grizzled ole veteran ref of 50 plus years experience who, offered to let me conduct the pregame , "well, do you want to tell them the weather or you want me to do it?", he asked. Puzzled momentarily by his description, I paused not understanding that by that he meant the pregame session. Though gracious in his offer, I relented: no way it was my first game, I was already too nervous. So, he proceeded and briskly at the T minus 5:00 minute mark loudly announced: "Coaches and captains to center court!". I observed that without delay the participants immediately discontinued any engaged task and attentively appeared at his behest as if it were an Utterance. The Referee began: "this game is like your school classroom, the coaches are the teachers and the refs are your friends so respect them both. Ladies show me your numbers, ok we got 10 and 24, now you two ladies listen up you're the leaders so go back and tell your teammates to play defense with your feet not your hands, and show sportsmanship, helping a player up if you accidentally knock her down. And coaches let's us know what kind of timeout you're wanting, good luck and have fun!". Boy oh boy those players and coaches sure did behave in what I can perhaps most accurately say was an"intentionally polite" manner towards that ref (and myself though perhaps by default). I mean you should've seen how those players always gave ball to yhe ref , hustling yo retrieve errant balls, and how both coaches said things like "sorry my bad ref. Guess you saw it better,
or good cal ref my girl needs to get better at that. You're probably asking yourself why is kansas ref rambling on and on, well it's probably bcz there something to be gained by the use of a formality despite the arguments for its extinction.