Giving coaches technical fouls

[SMEngmann]

From a coach's perspective, there are always times when a coach feels that he needs to stand up in some way for his team. Perhaps the players on his team felt they were getting the short end of some calls and that caused them to lose focus on what they needed to do to win the game. When the coach gets involved in that way, one of two things can happen: the players will realize that the coach will take care of discussing calls, or the players will get more distracted and the parents at this level will lower themselves to the level of the coach. This kind of tactic is only effective in sparking a team if the coach is honest with his team, generally respectful toward the officials and he has the respect of his players. If a typical "howler monkey" attempts this, in my experience, it causes the players to further lose focus and look for excuses to fail. The way the article presents it, though, it seems as if this is a viable tactic. It is not, and it can only work in very limited circumstances.