Can't we all just get along?
 

Apparently the search function only goes back one year? I have posted a couple of threads about a jr. high principal and some, uh, incidents. One shows up, one doesn't. http://forum.officiating.com/showthread.php?t=28665


I went to call games Monday and there he was. Oh, well, hope for the best, expect the worst, and deal with whatever happens. Time to begin, and my partner walks up to the table and picks up the ball. The principal steps down out of the stands. He tells my partner "You need to be the referee for both games." He points at me. "That guy cheats against us. Three times he has thrown games." Partner looked at him like you might look at something a dog left on the sidewalk, shrugged, shook his head, and tossed the ball to me at the circle. Principal continued his rant. "He is the only dishonest official I know. If it happens tonight, I'm calling the commissioner's office this time."
(I'd love to hear that conversation.) Partner stood there with his back to the guy and did not acknowledge him any more. In the girls game there was a player control foul on the point guard for my friend's team where she planted her defender with a forearm. I was a little shaky on the call, thought the defender might have bumped her first, but I made it. Principal chimed in loudly, "That's one you got right! That's the first one you got right!" Take a compliment any way you can get it. Between games the principal approached my partner again and spoke briefly. I said now what? Partner said he had merely said that we called a good game. Go figure.

I frequently latch on to mick's theme: Get in. Get done. Get out.

Why did you and your partner allow him to stay at the game? :confused:

Was it one of these?

http://forum.officiating.com/showthread.php?t=10314
http://forum.officiating.com/showthr...?threadid=6653

IANAL, but it seems to me that if he accuses you of being dishonest and his accusation results in you losing work, you have a case for slander. I would have told him that to his face.

And - I agree with Scrapper - that guy would have been long gone if it was my game.

"Sir. I don't know what issues you have with my partner but now is neither the time nor place. You're the leader of this school and should be setting an example. You're either going to have to calm down and address this later or leave. The choice is yours."

And maybe remind him, since there's no administrator around after we toss him, we could forfeit the game. :rolleyes:

If he managed to stay in after the initial tirade, the little display of mockery would have ended his time in the gym.

That's them. How do you do that?

Everybody I have talked to about this matter all seem to kind of treat this guy like a crazy relative.

"We know he ain't right. We know none of this is your fault. But just ignore him and work around him as best you can."

I just feel like if I tried to have him ejected from the gym for anything short of coming onto the court screaming during the game, it would make more trouble for me.

Some of the principals around here have taken the path of least resistance on this matter. "We need the game worse than we need you as an official and possibly no game or an incident at the game. Nothing personal, but we'll have somebody else here for this one." Hard to blame them here. But it is still difficult to let a guy like this dictate anything to anyone, especially something that it is in no way his place to do so.

True colors do have a way of coming out. Last year, before the tournament at the school where the game was this week, the coach called mr. principal to discuss, "Look, chief, I don't know if j. a. r. will be here or not, but if he is, he will be calling games, so just let me know if y'all are not coming." Mr. principal told him no problem, it was all in the past. I called at the tournament, including some of their games, without incident. The following Monday, another local jr. high was at mr. principal's place, and he said, "Oh, by the way, if (you know who) is officiating your tournament next week, we are not coming."

Perhaps I did not make it clear, the guy we are discussing is the visiting
principal in everything that has happened.

I went to the "Advanced Search" and searched for the keywords "principal confrontation" and limited the search to the basketball forum. That came up empty, so I tried "principal complain" and looked for a thread that you started. One came up and in that thread, you had posted the link to the other thread.

All the more reason to just get rid of him then.

I personally would have run him as soon as he said something DURING the game.

This seems like one of those times you would ask your association to boycott the clown.

http://www.jackiekendall.com/images/...d_nb_small.gif

Your partner should've addressed the situation somehow, and you should have made it clear to your partner during the pregame what the past history was to anticipate the problem and discuss possible solutions. In my game, I probably would have run the guy or had game management ready to get him outta there to avoid direct confrontation.

My question to you JAR, is why do you keep taking games involving this team? With all these posts it seems like a personal feud. I understand the thought process of not wanting an idiot to win in a situation like this, but what do you gain by continuing to work this guy's games? You will never gain this guy's respect or acknowledgement even by calling perfect games every time, nor should you care about it. You will also not change this guy's behavior, nor is it your job or your responsibility. Life's too short and there are plenty of other schools that would love for you to work their games, so I suggest that you just stay away from this school and avoid the headaches.

If you are still adament about working these games, I suggest having someone videotape the game to capture his behavior, and to demonstrate that you called a solid game.

He knew the situation, just did not know all the details. I filled him in at halftime. I actually liked the way he handled the situation. He might as well have put a rubber stamp on the guy's forehead which said: THIS PERSON NOT WORTHY OF OUR ATTENTION

It is mainly the principle of the thing not the money. But money is also a factor when I missed several entire tournaments within a few miles of my home just because of something that never really happened in the first place.

I would have had security toss him out of the gym. I'm at a loss to understand why you put up with this.

I understand the approach, but I still don't agree with it. This guy is in a position of authority, he's not just a regular fan, and he's using that authority to create a hostile environment that could have many negative ramifications on a Jr. high school game. I don't think he can be ignored. Plus he attacked your integrity and threatened you, your partner should have game management dump him, or use JR's approach, but it has to be addressed because it sets the tone for the game.



If you're missing tournaments and this is costing you other games, you really need to talk to your assignor and find out what's going on. It's one thing to be badmouthed, it's another not to be backed up by the assignor to the point where a feud with one coach is hurting other parts of your schedule. I don't know the situation, but if the problem is costing you other assignments, there might be other things at play that you need to know but aren't aware of.

If this was me, I'd have the guy up on Judge Judy's show in no time.:eek:

Only pick battles that you have a chance to win. Around here it would be hard to have one principal kick another principal out of the gym unless he threw a brick or something. At the most they might take him aside and "talk to him to calm him down." This is a little man on a power trip flaunting his authority. If I do tell game management that he should be removed and they don't do it, things would be even worse.

History is full of battles (real and otherwise) that would never have been fought & won if this philosophy was adhered to. (That's my polite way of saying bullsh1t to that.) "Either he goes or we go."
"Well we can't make him leave."
"Then we'll leave."

Seems simple to me.

(yeah yeah I know then the kids suffer...but IMO they've already suffered because you let this jerk treat you like sh1t. At least now they know actions have consequences.)

I think I know what is going on. When the original blowup happened, the guy said he was going to call my assignor. I don't know if he actually did or not, but the coach/principal of the school where the thing happened did call and told the assignor that I did nothing wrong, that the perception of bad calling was in the eyes of the beholders. When I saw the assignor we discussed the incident briefly and he said, "We better just keep you away from those idiots." The problem is one of geography. The area our association covers is about 130 miles long. I live up on the extreme north end of the territory. When we go to games we are paid travel from the hometown of the association, which is roughly in the center, regardless of the actual distance traveled. The rule has always been that games are assigned with the jr. high close to home, and the varsity basically anywhere. One needs to get all the games close to home that one can get for the travel money to balance out, and for it to be easier on everybody involved. Because of this situation, there have been times when I have literally met other officials in the road as we all traveled many extra miles to call ball games when we all could have stayed within 15 minutes of home but for the b*tching of one poor, misguided, individual.

This behavior needs to be reported directly to the state association, since it seems as if your assignor isn't doing anything about it.

Since this guy is from the visiting team, I'd have no problem with you saying that he needs to leave or else that school forfeits. Alternately, with a warning to the coach first, T him up and throw him out if he becomes a problem during the game.

The bigger problem, IMO, is when the person causing problems is with home game admin. When I've had those problems before, I don't fight it on site, I just make a complete report to my assignor when I get home.

Whew!! That would be worth watching...

If you intend to ignore it, if it doesn't bother you, then why do you keep posting about it? :(

And why do you sound so defensive when we tell you how to handle this differently?

I just find it to be a very interesting story. I thought others might also.

I didn't realize that I sounded defensive. I do appreciate the suggestions, but I simply have not heard one that I thought would help. My understanding is that in the state of Louisiana, the LHSAA has nothing to do with jr. high sports. I know that jr. highs can and do use whomever they want as basketball officials. So there would be no one to report this guy to except the superintendent of schools. I inquired here locally about doing exactly that and was told by more than one person who should know, in a nutshell, "Do that if you want to, but nothing will come of it."

Depending on state rules, BOTH schools would have to have an administrator present. I know one league/conference whose rule is that if one team didn't have an administrator present (can be the AD also, unless the AD is the coach), it's a forfeit.

Be careful about asking the "home" principal to kick out the "visiting" principal. You could be opening a Pandora's Box if you do so. I heard of one incident where that happened (and I can't reveal the details because it almost jeopardized an assigning contract), and the state activities association and the state principals/administration association had to step in. I guess what ended up happening was both teams forfeited the game (a double forfeit), the officials were told they could not officiate for either school for a certain amount of time, AND both principals lost their board/committee assignments in the principals' association. If you think the nastiness AFTER the game was bad, from what I heard, the nastiness in the gym when it happened was even worse. The officials ended up having to eject a few players and a couple coaches because they decided what happened off the court was going to spill onto the court. Nothing good comes of it when you ask a principal to remove a visiting administrator. :(

Simple as hell........

If you do want to do something about it, you have 2 options;
1) Quit taking abuse from the principal. The FED case book outlines quite thoroughly the procedure to follow. The principal is a "spectator" and you treat him as such. If you have a problem with him, you get game(home) management to tell him to cut his crap out, If he refuses, have game management put him out of the gym. Stop the game until he leaves. If he refuses to leave, suspend the game and write a report to the league/assignor on it. If no one in the gym identifies themselves as home management, then it's up to the head coach of the home team to assume that role. If he doesn't want to, same thing.....suspend the game and write her up. In this case, because you've had previous problems, alert your assignor as to what you'll be doing if you run into problems.
2) Tell your assignor not to assign you to any more games involving that principal's school, and also refuse any assignments given to you involving that school.

If you don't want to do something about it, then quit complaining about it and just go officiate.

No doubt that advice won't help you either.

and if you do #1, you'll get one of two responses:
1. the principal will eventually get the point and stop going to games.
2. #2 above will happen.

Try this advice on for size: write a letter to the school board and the superintendent of the district informing them of the slander that their principal is engaging in. It would be better yet if you had a lawyer friend who would do the letter for you...inform the board and the superintendent that if the slander continues you will be forced to pursue legal action against the principal involved AND the district employing him...that will get their attention and he will be told to knock it off.

Or you could just keep ignoring him and hope he goes away...:rolleyes:

Easier just to call Judge Judy. :)

Here's another option, since it sounds like you are stuck if you wanna make $$ doing tournaments this principal and his school come to.

Get your assignor, an attorney if you want, have the school get this guy and whoever they want to meet. Have both parties tell their side of the issue. Get it out there so that you know what this guy's real beef with you is. It sounds like there is more to this than you realize. Get down to the facts rather than guess what the issue is. Maybe he just hates your haircut.

Both parties need to get over the issue(s) and move on, and quit acting like children. Until you deal with this guy he is going to make the working environment increasingly difficult. Tossing the guy out of games repeatedly will only add credibility to his position that you have something against his school and that will hurt your ability to officiate close to home.

Good luck

I guess you have to choose how you handle these things, but he's not staying in my game after the "dishonest" comment. That qualifies as severe verbal abuse and not only would he have to leave, he would be reported.

As distasteful as it seems, you have to take care of business. That means not running from doing what has to be done for ANY reason. Believe me when I say I speak from experience.

You can almost always justify a technical and even an ejection. What you can't justify is the problems NOT calling what needs to be called bring about.

From an assignor's viewpoint, I agree with the above fully and completely. Well, maybe except for the technical foul part. That I don't really recommend.

Unsporting conduct is unsporting conduct, no matter who it comes from. Part of any official's job is having to deal with it.

Don't misunderstand: I didn't say (or didn't intend to say) a T in THIS situation. What I meant was a T or an ejection IN GENERAL -- for causes that warrant it. And by ejection, I also meant a removal.

You need to toss this guy and just as importantly every other crew that goes in and hears similar stuff from him needs to give him the boot as well. Eventually someone in the district will come to the realization that this guy is a piss-poor role model for his students and shouldn't be there. He acts that way because he gets away with it.