Today I had 5 games, all of them 12-13 year olds.


About 2 minutes into the third game, the ball is thrown in, front court control is established by dribbling, the dribbler looses control and the ball goes into the back court. The dribbler goes to recover it, my partner calls over and back. The coach went ballistic, standing and screaming, "SHE DIDN'T HAVE CONTROL, HOW CAN YOU CALL THAT ect..." I go by him, tell him that's enough and give him the stop sign. He continues, WHACK, I assess the first T. At which point he doesn't seem to get the hint, "HOW CAN YOU T ME UP, YOU MADE A BAD CALL, SHE DIDN'T HAVE CONTROL..." WHACK, I give him another. Inform him he's ejected, to which his assistant replies, "HOW CAN YOU EJECT HIM OVER THIS, SHE DIDN'T ESTABLISH CONTROL OF THE BALL, WHERE'D YOU LEARN TO REF!!" WHACK, I give one to him, then the coach says he's refusing to leave the gym, so I inform the timer to give me a five minute countdown, and then tell the coach that if doesn't vacate his position within five minutes the game is forfeited. He leaves immediatly and the remainder of the game goes on without incident.

Now these games are played with 8, 4 minute shifts, for fair play, and the convenor of this age group who also happens to be the president of the league, and this happens to be one of the biggest leagues in the province, comes up to me and starts explaining to me, how everyone's a volunteer, and that I shouldn't be T-ing anyone up. I tried to explain to him what happened, and how it happened, but he just kept on going until he said somethat that really shocked me, "Do you know who you just ejected?", I couldn't believe he said this, I said, "What does that have to do with anything?", he told me that this coach was "One of the most important people in the basketball community" At which point I replied, "I treat everyone equally when it comes to technical fouls." He said, told me I'm putting myself ahead of the game, at which point I walked off to resume the game.

Now in my report to the assignor about the ejection, I'm thinking about mentioning that, just because I felt he was totally out of line to say that. Any thoughts??

The comments of the supervisor absolutely warrant mention in your report - if I were assigning officials to this league, I'd have a good conversation with this supervisor about supporting officials and would definately consider not assigning any for the next year if things stayed this way.

I guess I just will never understand.
 

My main question to you is where was your partner when all this happen? I agree that those Ts were warranted (especially from kids games like these), but your partner might have been a help to not have them in your grill like that.

As I have said many times before, this is the reason I do not work a lot of these kinds of games. There is very little accountability with the individuals that run this league. If you put all of that in your report, I am not sure what the assignor is going to do or what he can do. If the administrator has little or no sense in these types of situations, then that tells you a lot about these games. I read about these leagues all the time on this board and that is where everyone is having all these problems with coaches and players. Of course some of these situations might happen at other levels, but they do not happen without some serious consequences at the HS levels. I would always rather do just HS Freshman ball only, than do these leagues where no one is accountable for their actions.

Peace

Bad Vibes.......
 

I believe the league needs to re-evaluate what the purpose is of the league.

Maybe they shouldn't have referees for this age group and let them do it on "the HONOR system".

I respect what you are doing in "giving back to community" (got BIG bucks for your 5 games???)....but honostly, is the crap and lack of respect from a coach/parent(s) of 12 & 13 year olds worth the grief and "egos" of a few "overgrown idiots". Oh, I forgot....probably MONEY has something to do with why you should be more careful who you piss off.

I think I would seek a more appreciative league, that understands its role and mission, to work in.

Keep up the good work!

wl

I've had exactly the same type of situation come up- and more than once. The only thing that I woulda done different from what ref18 actually did would be to give the coach 60 seconds instead of 5 minutes to leave the gym. Five minutes is way too long to give the clown a forum to rant and rave. At the end of 60 seconds, if the coach isn't gone, I'm gone. Forfeit and write it up.

Typical rec league nonsense. Good job, ref18.

I dont
 

From what the others have posted that looks like you did the right thing. Basketball in australia is so much different from the USA i wish we had the system like use have but we just dont have the support and money.

I mean in our highs school league in my city we only have four schools that compete for 7 weeks we have a grade seven and eight team and each school has one year 7/8 team and they play the others skools twice each and then one final then after that we have a grade 9/10 who have the same competition. The games a 2 20minute halves.

Now i am the only referee in both of those comps and there are two games each week on at the same time. So some games i have to ref half of one and then half of the other but for the other halfs there is no referee or the coaches ref it.

But onto my other point we have a winter cop and a summer comp winter comp is pretty organised but summer is pathetic summer comps has under 9,11,13,15 and 17s in the 9,11 and 13s ages we wouldnt make that call we dont usually call three second violations because the skill level is so poor.

Let alone we barely have coaches in summer comp let alone assistants we may have to get the coach or players wo are substituted of to do the bench. And we try and avoid getting into conflct we players and coaches beacuse it is ment to be a " FUN " comp.

Is it reasonable to expect "one of the most important people in the basketball community" to abide by the rules and have respect for the officials?
(not to mention the expectation of exhibiting above-standard sportsmanship)

Just curious.

I get a kick out of hearing stuff like this.

These "important" and "prominent" people pull down their pants to take a sh!t just like the rest of us.

I suppose some things never change.
:)

So I should've only given him a minute. That sounds good, I'll remember that next time I toss a coach, which hopefully doesn't happen for a while.

As for anything happening because of this I doubt it, this leage is so huge that it is one of our main customers, with the rec leagues and all the tournaments it runs. I know we won't ever do a withdrawl of service against them.

And I probably won't stop doin it either, because if it wasn't for leagues like this, I wouldn't be reffing. I'm just breaking into the high school scene, and until I'm fully in that I'm still going to have to do the rec leagues. And yes, money is a big factor, this league pays really well, and as I'm off to university next year, I need to save up.

But I am going to write it up, because if this is what he's telling me I'd hate to hear some of the messages the newer officials are getting from this league. Hopefully no one gets intimidated into giving immunity to someone because of past accomplishments.

And on a comedic note, no one has really explained to me exactly who this guy is or what he's done yet :D

ref18, would it have been possible to explain to the coach the rule and avoid the ejection or was he that out of control?

The beauty of that play is that when a coach is so blatantly wrong and they complain like that, sometimes explaining to them that they dont know the rule can diffuse the situation, because the coach feels stupid for complaining about it afterwards.

Example in tonights game, B2 takes a charge relatively close to the basket, A coach complains loudly that it should have been a block or no call, when my partner tried to explain, the coach said that there is a semicircle under the basket where it is supposed to be a block inside that, ala NBA. . . i belive the exact quote was "I know the rule, I used to play!", Where my partner follows up by saying "Well coach, unless you played in the NBA, thats not a rule in this league." (NFHS). . .In this situation, he sat down and didnt say much after that, as he was humbled from his lack of knowledge.

And again, not being there I dont have any idea what the situation was like, but I know I've tried to communicate as much as I can with the coaches to prevent events like that. Just my opinion. . .

Is it too much to expect coaches to behave properly? Frankly, I think that there is only so much that an official should do or has to do and then you just need to take care of business.

Ref18, you are as trigger happy as ever, the Whackenator lives.:D

I'd point out to the league the flip side of the issue. How is not treating this "VIP" the same as any other coach going to hurt the league?

The other coaches are already going to think so and so is getting calls because of his position.

I've had to deal with this kind of crap in mens leagues when you have some of the NBA guys playing. The NBA guys expect to be treated differently, and the other players THINK the NBA guys will get all the calls based on the awe factor, so you really can't win. You just do your job and take care of business.

Ref18:

Inquiring minds want to know. Just who did you toss?

MTD, Sr.

I still don't know.

We had our Christmas meeting today, I handed the assignor the report and found out who the guy was.

Apparently he set some sort of scoring record in university.

Other officials also seemed to know who he was, and I was told that he's been T'd up many times for this sort of behaviour.


I guess officials and convenors have a different image of what an important person is.

On a side note, I have a different reason why I do not like youth basketball. I call a back court, same exact situation as you describe. Coaches start to yell and scream, partner over rules me from lead position saying that the ball was lose.