Oh what a night

[Mike Burns]

I don’t often have a need to vent, but this was just one of those nights. I help with a youth league run by Florida Basketball and Volleyball Assoc. (FBVA). Tonight I had three games and they were all three, shall we say, memorable.

First game was 7-8 yr olds. BTW, I have found this to be the hardest age group to officiate. The league has a rule that this age group cannot press in the backcourt. After the first warning, Team “B” got a “T” for pressing and the coach went ballistic. The coach for “B” was very vocal right from the start, which doesn’t bother me as long as it doesn’t get personal. But as coaches will, he stepped over the line with his comments. “T” for coach (that’s 2 now for those of you that are counting). Then he drops the “F”_bomb on me. That’s it he’s gone. So while we are shooting the 6 throws several of the moms in the bleachers ask in a not-so-nice way why I tossed the coach. I said I didn’t think anyone would appreciate him using that kind of language in front of their kids, so he got ran. And this was the good game.

The second game was 12-13 yr olds. My partner and I had a run in with a couple of obnoxious parents after the game. At one point I had to physically get in between Mr. Johnny’s dad and my partner.

I would be interested to hear how you deal with fans like this. I know we could suspend the game and have them removed, but this was after the game.

The third game was 14-15 yr olds. The score was 85 to 15. Enough said.



[Edited by Mike Burns on Nov 13th, 2001 at 02:02 PM]