Incident With Fan
This might seem like it has an obvious answer, but if it does the answer has so far eluded me. Sorry for the length...
Working the 5th game of a 5 game set today at a 6 court facility. "Home" team is more physical than the other, puts "Visiting" team in bonus rather quickly after the second half begins. Home player picks up his fourth foul and during time out the player's mom comes on the court and tries to ask us what exactly her son is doing to be called for fouls. I'm ready to whack her with a T right there, but my partner waves me up and simply says to her, "He pushes, now get back in the stands." Mom returns to the stands and then proceeds, with her husband, to rain abuse down on my partner and I the rest of the game. They are not being profane or getting personal in any way and my partner advises me to ignore them, which I do. Now here's where it gets interesting... Being a multi-court facility, there are no locker rooms for us to escape to or leave our gear in. We have no choice but to run to the table, sign the score sheet, grab our gear and get the heck out of dodge. Unfortunately, we are not quite fast enough and the Dad catches us. He starts getting louder and louder as we walk away from him. We realize we're not going to make it to the door without this getting worse, so we make a beeline towards the nearest cluster of officials we see. Before we make it there, the Dad grabs my partner by the arm and attempts to pull him around and make my partner face him. Thankfully one of the officials we were heading to saw what was happening and got in between them. To make a long story short, our Supervisor wants my partner to press charges, etc. My question is what do you do in a situation like that? Is there anything you can do? Granted, I should have not have let the parents go on as they did during the game and in that sense I probably should not have acceded to my partner as much as I did, but you live and learn. |
When you have abusive parents and you know which child is theirs, call a fifth foul on the kid and get him out of the game as quickly as possible. ;)
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When the mom came out onto the floor to talk to you, you should have found some sort of site administrator to address the issue. Fans have no business pulling that kind of stuff. Then when the fans continued to berate you, again, site administration should have become involved.
In a game like this, I have literally used a fire exit to get out away from nasty fans. Whatever it takes. And then, don't work in that league or whatever again. If the powers that be can't control their fans any better than that, you don't want to even go there. |
"Sorry ma'am, which player is your son?"
"Number 14." "Tweet. Technical foul - White 14." :D |
I agree with Juulie outside of the fact they should never have allowed a parent to get on the floor without running out there to put her back where she belonged. Which bags the question, 6 court facility, very doubtful there was game administration on each court.
Do we know who our game administrators are and where they can be found? I had a situation umpiring where after the game, the losing coach came after my partner in the parking lot and my partner was "egging" the coach on, you could see a lot brewing during the game as well. I was able to get between them and had the coach (who was also a parent) calm down enough to look around at all of his players staring wide-eyed. He apologized to me and went to his car. |
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Second she hit the floor, mommy better hope there is a radio broadcast of the game, because she is going to be spending the rest of it in her car.
I've done this before, ejected a father while the mother had to sit there embarassed. I'm sure dad got an ear full when they got home. |
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ANYONE WHO STEPS ONTO THE PLAYING COURT WITHOUT PROPER AUTHORIZATION IS AUTOMATICALLY EJECTED FROM THE PREMISES. |
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The only thing I think you can do is to try to avoid being confronted. It sounds as though you did that in the crowded venue. If talk is civil, then I might end up talking to the guy, but otherwise, I'm ignoring him and going right past him too. |
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When GM comes by stop the game or at a natural stoppage, talk to them and have the offender removed. |
if you do not have the parent ejected from the game and do not press charges, what makes you think these parents (or any others parents/fans watching this unfold) will stop engaging in this behavior in the future?
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