Game from hell

[Jay R]

Well, it was bound to happen. Today I refereed my 40th game of the year (my rookie season) and it was the most difficult by far. I need to vent. It was girls game (Gr7-8) and it was terrible. Withing seconds of the tip, bodies were flying and the clutching and grapping never ended until the final buzzer.

One of the coaches (the most reasonable of the two) mentionned three or four times that he did not want to see anyone get hurt. All I could say was that we were calling fouls about every 20 seconds on average, I don't know what else we could have done? We probably called 60 fouls, 4 girls fouled out, one tech to a coach (the not so reasonable one). The losing coach implied that we let get out of hand, I replied that we had just done a game before that one where none of the teams got in bonus in either half.

I feel that I've worked hard and prepared myself to do a good job. I certainly take all the games seriously (no matter the level), but it's discouraging when coaches and parents seem to think that a game like this is the officials fault. Any thoughts?