How to talk to a referee

[Texas Aggie]

>> level of play was allowed to get so rough and out-of-control<<

I believe this is one of the world's biggest myths: that officials control this play simply by their calls. In my experience, the EXACT same thing would have happened (bumps/crying/etc.) even had they called a lot of fouls, its just that the game would have taken much longer and the number of foul calls increased. More likely than not, the kids were agressively out of control, play wise, and that out of control posture is what caused the problems. Kids don't go "flying all over the court" because of something the official did or didn't do. Even if a call was missed, the whistle there wouldn't have healed any injury and its very doubtful it would have detered any future physical behavior -- at least the stuff you are talking about.

Now, its a completely other issue to say, "the officials allowed too many hacks on the shooter," or "didn't call the rebounding fouls, putting our smaller kids at a disadvantage." Those are legitimate issues, but you would have to assert that the game started smoothly and ran that way for a while, but got increasingly rougher as the kids figured out they could get away with more and more contact. I don't believe this is a natural tendency in basketball, and I'd be hard pressed to remember a game I had like that. Virtually all the time, like two games I had the other night, the game starts out with the kids out of control and remains that way regardless of what we call.