The worst?

[Loudwhistle]

Originally Posted by just another ref

Which is worst case scenario for an official?

Rec leagues?
Little girls games?
Games where everybody know you by name?

The answer: All of the above, which is what I had tonight. The last game of the night. Actually pretty high quality for this kind of game. Hard fought and close. I was not happy with the job we did, but, well we did what we could.
I have a series of partners in this league, none of whom has ever been a registered official, and let's just say it gets interesting. The finishing touch tonight came at the end of the above mentioned game. A parent from the winning team, a guy I've known for 30+ years, a guy who has played ball all his life and even used to do some jr. high officiating yells, "We won in spite of them! No calls!" Is it just me or how big an *** do you have to be to yell this at the end of an 11-12 year old girls game, no matter what was or wasn't called. The thing that annoyed me most was how much hearing him yell this annoyed me, if that makes any sense. I'll be okay. Tomorrow is another day.
Back to the peaceful surroundings of varsity games and a gym filled mostly with strangers.

JAR,
You need to add three more items to your list to get the full affects of worst case scenario reffing:
4. Your daughter is playing in the game
5. Most of the players are your students that you are currently teaching
6. Your wife is one of the coaches!

See you had it pretty good after all! I feel for you though, it helps me to get past the annoying comments by thinking that I'm here for the kids, and like you said, "Tomorrow is another day!"

I've had fair success in shutting up the loud mouth parent(s), by asking them days later when I see them up town or at the next game (before it starts) if they would mind helping out with reffing future games, I say this sincerely and mention that we could use some help at the games, especially with reffing. Most of the time this shuts them up at future games and in a couple of cases they take the bait and try to ref a game with me, funny how it only takes one game of trying to reff these lower level games and the parent never steps forward again, they usually tell me at the end of their one game that they never had a clue how difficult it is to see plays, fouls, violations ect, half can't even remember how to blow the whistle!