Ugly game questions

[daveg144]

We had an ugly girls varsity game over the weekend. Home team is 0-6, visitors are 6-0. We talk in pregame about staying on top of the game, getting the obvious fouls not to expect a blowout (because you never know for sure what's going to happen).

In the first minute of the game, I pass on a shaky illegal screen (there's a little contact, but the defender gets through it without losing her "man"). Coach says to call it. (In hindsight, he's correct and next time I will definitely call it). As the game progresses, the home team (0-6) is staying in the game and actually takes the lead just before halftime. It's a physical game and we were in the double bonus mid way through the 2nd period. All told, we probably had close to 30 fouls. The trend is that the home team's fouls are mostly "bad" fouls, such as pushing, obvious player controls, hip checks, etc.

We talk at halftime and decide we need to call everything as we don't really have the luxury of passing on much. Home team's fouls are too hard and ugly to pass on and the visitor's are going to get frustrated as long as they're struggling to pull ahead. I think the visitors came into the game expecting to win by a large margin. They're not playing well and they're going to get more frustrated as long as the game remains close.

The visitors pull ahead by 4-5 points in the third period. We call a ton of fouls (both ways) in an effort to keep the game in check. Neither coach has much to say (most of the calls are so obvious, what can they say?). Let me say that a lot of the fouls by the visitors are pretty obvious, too (I don't want to give the impression that the visitors are playing a pristine game, they've got a couple "goons" on their team, too).

In the fourth period, the visitors open up a 12 point lead and are not threatened the rest of the way. However, the home team continues to hammer and hack. We call foul after foul after foul. Three players for the home team foul out (not a word from the coach). None of the fouls are so bad you could call them flagrant or intentional. We did call a technical for an obvious case of disconcertion (defender continued to put her hand in front of the face of an offensive player on a throw in after we told her to stop it). I explained the call to the coach and again, he said very little ("I didn't know they couldn't do that" was all he said).

Before we can get this debacle finished and get off the floor, we have a held ball (about the 6th one of the second half). As they continue to tussle for the ball (after the whistle has blown 2-3 times and we're moving towards the players) the visitor's girl relaxes her grip and in doing so, she gets thrown to the floor by the home team player. Visiting coach wants a foul called. What can you call? We kept telling the girls to stop on the whistle, but neither team would do it. The home player was a much larger girl who held on just a bit longer than the smaller visitor. She wasn't hurt, but it did look ugly. There was no taunting or anything like that. None of us had anything. We awarded the ball on the alternating possession and the game ended with no more problems.

In the officials room after the game, all three of us are not happy with the game. I understand that we're all going to have games like this from time to time. We don't play, our job is to officiate the game we get to the best of our abilities. That being said, what else can you do to "control" a game like this? My thought is to more quickly identify your problem players and be sure my partners know who they are so we can get them off the floor as soon as possible. As it turned out, our problem players (all on the home team) all fouled out, but perhaps we could have gotten rid of them sooner? My first no-call (illegal screen I mentioned) could have been the first foul on one of the problem players (of course I didn't know that in the first minute of the game).

Your thoughts on handling a game that is certainly not "chicken salad", but instead is "chicken s..t"?