That's right! :D

7th grade boys travel over the weekend. Tight game with lots of fouls. Second half opens with 3 consecutive fouls against Team A. Coach A calls time out and starts with "forget about the refs", which to that point was OK, then I hear him say "they don't want you to win", which is a different matter entirely.

Time out ends and the kids come back onto the court and I head over to Team A coach and say, "Coach please don't tell the kids that we don't want them to win- we don't care who wins and you know that. I don't want the kids to buy into that kind of nonsense". Coach says OK, but you just called all the fouls on us. I said "Coach you're right, we did just call three in a row on your team, but they weren't cheap ones, they were good calls."

Team A winds up losing by a couple but his comments didn't come up again...
Kept control of a game that easily could have gotten way out of hand.

Miller time!

Z

Comments I can Neither confirm nor deny making:

Coach "You can't call that"
Anon Ref "Yes I can. I just did"

Coach "Are you gonna get them out of the lane?"
Anon Ref "I am going to give their bigs as much time in the paint as I give yours"

Coach "I felt that was a push off"
Anon Ref "Coach, I can validate your feelings that it was a push off. However, you player slid into them"
Coach "I have never had my feelings validated by a ref"

Coach " That was a GD MF jig. The player did a jig and then YOU call a foul on my player?"
Anon Ref "Coach, 2 things. 1. They werent doing a jig so much as they were doing the Mambo and 2. I guarantee had your player not fouled the player was going to commit a travel violation
Next game
Coach "So Mr Ref. are we going to be doing the Mambo tonite?"
Anon Ref "Sorry coach, but there are Tango lessons next door if you are interested!"

Coach "That is not right. You kicked the rule. My husband is a referee, I know the rule"
Anon Ref "Coach I know EXACTLY who your husband is and you can go home, tell him the play and he will tell you I am right. All in a loving manner I am sure!"

As I said, I can neither confirm nor deny who make those commentsv:cool:

7th grade game? This is a T in my game.

yeah, I considered whacking the coach there, but decided to try to talk to him first. I thought a T might have turned the whole game ugly.

Next time, you betcha.

Fair enough.

I'm jumping in late, as usual around here, but great discussion. Communication with coaches is an ongoing learning process. Last week we had a student section come on the floor in a very tight game. The clock did say 0, but we had a time out and were putting 1.9 back up. The visiting coach argued with me that I had to assess the T. My answer to him was, "If the same thing happened on your floor, with your student section, would you want us to call it then?" This ended the conversation and I was satisfyied with it. On the way home I was replaying the situation and a better answer would have been, "The clock said 0, the students thought the game was over." My point is that communication is a learning process.

Take suggestions from here. Try them out in games. See what works for you. On thing I'm working hard on these days is to keep my answers to the rules and use the "language" of the rules book. I rode along with a D1 women's crew last Sunday and what impressed me most about their pregame was that everything discussed was talked about in the specific language used in the rules book. I like this because I think over time it would train me to use the language of the rules during the game as well. My project this week is to rewrite my pregame list and make sure it is rules specific. Learning to officiate well is a journey.....

By Rule ...
 

If you choose to talk to the head coach, start off every sentence with, "Coach, by rule ..."

Also, there are coaches that have never read a rule book, and think that there are hundreds of rules, not just ten, so when questioned about a call, you may be able to get away with, "Coach, that was an easy call. Rule four". He'll be impressed that you've been able to memorize hundreds of rules by number, which may shut him up. Seriously, this has worked for me, but only with ignorant coaches, which are the worst kind.

DANG!!! maybe the best post i have ever read... ever! That is great stuff.