To 'T' or not to 'T'

[kbilla]

I haven't called a tech in a hs game Fresh through Varsity in as long as I can remember....tonight doing a Soph boys game. Going pretty smoothly, near the end of the first quarter I am T in front of visitor bench bench and I can hear the home coach almost behind me, so during the next dead ball, I basically walk the home coach who was in front of the table back to the box and say "coach the box ends right there"......a few trips up and down and we are back in the same position and have a sideline out of bounds and I look and the coach is right back there almost in front of the table again...so I walk back down again and go "coach I need to have you in the box". His response is "its a dead ball I can be out during a dead ball!" My only response was "coach you cannot, you must be in the box at all times"...no further incident til near the end of the second quarter. There is a play at the basket and my partner has a no call in his area. We transition and he gets a foul on a home team player, we're shooting two. Next thing I know the home assistant yells "how is that not a foul down there!", throws his arms up and proceeds to stand up and walk all the way to the end of the bench to get himself a drink of water....that's it, I bang the assistant coach...would I have without the comment? Possibly not. But how many "warnings" can I give to a HC and/or his bench before enough is enough? I thought I was more than patient with these guys...and I was suprised how little this HC knew about what he & his bench personnel could do given the fact that I think he has been around for quite a while...so we shoot the four FT's and before we were going to inbound, I decide I better explain the seatbelt, so I walk over and say "coach that techincal on your assistant is also indirect on you so you must be seated the rest of the game" and the assistant goes "yeah we know the rule!" Really?!?!?! If you knew the rules we never would have gotten to this point would we?

To make it even better as we are coming out to start the second half, a guy approaches us and introduces himself, turns out he is one of the varsity officials/state finals official, so I am really interested in what he has to say. He asks us a few things and then says "That T - did you really think that was necessary?" Apparently the coach went up to him at halftime and goes "how can the guy T me for my assistant getting a drink of water?!?" He didn't bother of course to mention the prior two warnings, nor the comment before walking down to get a drink...once I explained that,the varsity official was a little more understanding (he hadn't seen all that), but I still didn't get the feeling he was sold on it...as I said I can't remember the last HS T I gave and I truly am not a bench watcher. If the coach hadn't been literally in front of the table twice, we probably never would have gotten to this point, but at some point enough is enough! Thoughts?