Strange Night
 

I officiated 2 Girls CYO games last night - the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade "JV" game and the 7th and 8th grade "Varsity" game. It was an interesting night. My partner was an older gentleman who looked like exactly like the biker from the Village People and he was wearing black sweatpants with cargo pockets, which I found a bit odd. He also switched incorrectly and made a couple of calls that made us look bad, like granting a timeout to Team B when Team A had possession. In any case, I didn't mind working with him that much as he was a pretty nice guy. The "JV" game came down to the wire and the fans were insane. I was thinking, "these people are crazy, we're talking about 11 year old girls here." This was the first time I officiated a game with this age group, and I figured before hand that the fans would be a little more sedate. There were more than 20 held balls during the game and the fans started to get a little peeved at us because we kept calling held balls, and I have no idea what call they would have preferred instead. At one point, B1 and A1 were in A's backcourt, each with a hand on the ball and each moving. I called a held ball here and people went nuts! Early in the varsity game I called a push on B1, who was guarding the ball handler A1. It wasn't a hard foul, but it was definitely a foul. B Coach starts chirping that "This isn't tiddlywinks! This is the Schuylkill League! You can't call that a foul!" I told him I had no idea what tiddlywinks was and that it was obviously something from before my time (I'm 27). He later said that he didn't like that I didn't allow more contact and a more physical game. The game would have probably gotten out of hand if we didn't call close fouls. Then I could imagine the coaches complaining about "girls getting killed out there!" In any case, it was an interesting experience and I had fun. Just thought I'd share.

Are you sure we weren't working the same game? Oh wait a minute, you said your partner resembled the biker from the Village People, that couldn't have been me. Oh yeah, I was doing a boys reserve game last night. :rolleyes: Never mind! :cool:

I find that the intensity from fans/parents is creepng into lower and lower age groups. I think part of it is that the true elite athletes haven't been identified yet and their parents think that their kids are all elite athletes.

Same deal with coaches I think.

When looking at a scorebook attempting to determine whether it is a boys team's book or a girls team's book, one merely needs to look at the number of alternating possessions each game. Less than 10 -- boys....More than 15 -- girls.....Otherwise, these younger age games can have MANY similarities....

get ready for more...NCAA is now allowing colleges to recruite down to 7th graders.... 11-12 year olds are now "officially" prospects!!

http://sports.yahoo.com/top/news;_yl...v=ap&type=lgns

Tiddlywinks is a game played with small disks (like small gambling chips) played on a table. The players use one disk to attempt to flip the other disks into a cup by putting pressure on the edge of one disk with the one in his/her hand.

It is frequently used to describe a very passive situation or a very simple game. The coach's analogy would have been clear to me. Unfortunately, the coach needs to know his audience.

Yeah, but I what I was referring to was the fact that every time we called a held ball in our game last night, fans and coaches were screaming for a foul each time. :rolleyes: And there were quite a few held balls for a boys reserve (sophomore age around here) game. The boys V coach for the home school is an old coaching rival of mine, and he said the calls were legit, and he had the worse seat in the house! :eek:

How about 11-14 alternating possessions? ;)

Co-ed game?

I think it's the fact that the fans/parents in the lower age levels know fewer of the rules and don't know how to act at a game. If I volunteer for a fundraiser tournament, I can always count on at least one parent approaching me after the game whining about their team losing. The coaches don't know what they're doing and also don't know the rules, so that compounds the problem.

Not knowing the rules or understanding certain bball situations is a problem for a lot of these parents. The CYO league has a rule for the JV games that pressing is only allowed for the final 2 minutes of each half. The 'pick up line' where the defense can begin to defend against the ball is the top of the key! The problem with that is on the fast break. It seemed that the fans wanted us to somehow slow the game down or prevent the defense from defending until the reached the top of the key, even on the fact break. We had multiple situations where Team A was on a fast break and Team B defenders were in paralell positions between the half court line and the top of the key defending the ball. There was no way I was going to stop the action and prevent Team B from defending during the fast break; but it seemed that parents (not that I cared) wanted us to do just that.

Welcome to my world. :o

From my perspective in Western Oregon, I'd say players "getting killed" is just what you should expect in the "Schuylkill" League! What's your problem?

You know, I never thought of that. I basically live in the center of the Pennsylvania coal region and you have all these old coal region guys as coaches expecting their 13 year old female players to be like members of the Molly Maguires.