Questioning my T

[Back In The Saddle]

fiasco,

I'm coming back to this a little late, but ...

Good for you! The change in attitude and approach will make a big difference. As for the situation...you gave the coach a brief intelligent answer. Yes, he responded immaturely, but that's his problem, not yours. Coaches won't always (or even often) like or agree with your explanation. But the act of giving the explanation does a lot to dispel tensions. It sounds like he left you alone to work the rest of the game. That's a pretty good outcome, I'd say

Last night I had a coach who was 110% committed to being a jerk no matter what I did.

• VHC insists we have to start the game with a T because the home book wasn't filled out at the 10:00 mark. Because I checked at 11:00 I know that rosters were submitted and starters marked. But the home scorekeeper was nowhere to be found right up until game time. I declared the V book as the official book at about 1:00 and didn't stress about it.
• A couple minutes in my partner lets a H kid run the baseline on what should have been a spot throw-in. VHC and his noisy assistant are insistent that this is traveling and I need to call it, from 70 feet away. I do not share their conviction.
• At the next dead ball VHC insists that the aforementioned "traveling" is a correctable error and I need to fix it because we're still within the time frame.
• Another minute goes by and we have a free throw at his end. I'm L. There is some commotion about one of the free throws bouncing up and hitting a support wire before passing through the basket. My partner says something to the coach and we play on. At the next dead ball VHC calls me over and informs me that my partner told him that the ball hit the wire but it didn't matter because it was on a free throw. He tells me we're "costing him points".
• During this exchange his noisy assistant is up and chirping loudly. I give her the sit your butt down wave.
• Couldn't have been more than 2 plays later there is rebounding action in front of his bench. His girl gets the rebound. He thinks she gets whacked on the arm and he yells at me, "Call a foul!"
• I oblige. And so midway through the first quarter, he takes a well deserved seat on the bench.
• Things went much smoother from that point onward.

Oh, and this is just classic...when P and I return for the second half, VHC approaches and asks which of us is the referee. I tell him I am, and as I walk him back toward his bench he starts laying the old "I'm a referee too, and I even used to work college ball and I realize that you're here working the sophomores because you need to learn too, but..." business on me and goes on to recap his whole list of grievances making his case that we're costing him points. (Somehow I managed to not crack a smile when he laid the "I'm a referee" line on me, and wasn't even tempted to tell him that I do work college ball and that I'm working his game because the assigner called the night before in a bind because so many refs canceled to stay home and watch the BYU game.) I let him get it all off his chest, and then addressed his concerns in more detail (I had addressed most of them briefly at the time). And the darnedest thing happened. By the time I got to the scorebook complaint and explained that all that is required is for the rosters to be submitted with the starters marked at 10:00 and the rules say nothing about the book being filled out, he stopped and stared at me then asked, "Has that changed in the last few years then?"

Against what appeared to be impossible odds, through persevering with positive, approachable attitude and communication, despite sitting him down, it seems I gained some credibility with him. Nice. Unexpected. But nice.

BTW, it turns out his attitude is endemic to the entire program. The varsity crew sat the HC late in the 2nd quarter. The freshman crew had problems with the freshman coach. During the varsity game, the freshman coach was seated in the student section, giving his expert commentary on the officiating. The only coach we didn't have problems with was the JV coach. And that may only have been because she watched me whack the soph. coach. I'm betting she wasn't thrilled to see me come back out for her game