What Should You Do About Bad Officiating

[rainmaker]

Originally Posted by smurf

Seriously Folks,

The officiating where I live has gotten to the point where it's really, really bad. Is there anything a parent/coach can do about it or do we just have to learn to tolerate it?
What can coaches, parents, and fans do about it? What is the right approach?

Seriously, smurf, I'm glad you asked, because it gives me a chance to give my little lecture, and believe that someone might actually hear it and pay attention to it.

"As long as you blame the refs, your players aren't going to get any better." That's the whole story. If your refs are calling a travel sometimes after the first step, sometimes after the second, then don't ever take that second step. If your players are to be good players, they need to be able to adjust. This means that they can change their play to be able to handle different kinds of teams, and different kinds of plays, and thus different kinds of refs. But if you keep saying to your child that the refs were lousy, your child won't see the things she needs to work on, because she'll be too busy feeling sorry for herself.

The teams that I work with that are really good, end up in the state tournaments, put players into college scholarships (and I"m talking about not only high school teams, but also the classics middle school teams) have coaches that may or may not work the refs, but they don't let their players use that as an excuse. Even if they get lousy refs (and you know they do, since I said I've worked with them!) and they're yelling at the refs, they still tell the players what to fix and what to change. In fact, the best coaches I've worked with say things like,

"Yes, that was a travel, Ashley, and you've been doing it all season"
"Even if you didn't actually foul, you weren't supposed to be there."
"That was a great play, and it was also a foul."

I've even heard,

"So the ref doesn't know the travelling rule for that one situation. Then DON"T DO IT ANYMORE!!" Meaning, yea the ref was wrong, but you are even wronger to keep doing it.

As a parent, you need to focus on your kid's attitude, effort, improvement, and perspective. Those are all things you can have a direct influence on, and they don't require harsh words or angry confrontations.