Fight in girls game - sort of

[Mark Padgett]

Had two games last night, first one was a 6th grade "competitive" girls game. Visitors were getting splooched the entire game. Home team had a girl who was relatively tall and she pretty much controlled the game on both ends.

Middle of Q3, one of the visiting girls was guarding the tall girl who was posting up and when she received the ball, the defender just pushed her really hard in the small of the back. I was lead and blew the whistle immediately for the intentional. I didn't think it warranted a flagrant. The tall girl, much to her credit, just turned around and tossed the ball to me. The defender said something to the tall girl (I couldn't hear it) and the tall girl slapped her right across the face! Both teams and their coaches ran off the bench but everyone just kind of stood there, thank goodness. My partner and I broke it up quickly and everyone settled down.

We sorted things out by ejecting the tall girl for the slap, giving each team a bench technical (we thought that was "even"), shooting all the free throws and then getting on with the game. If I had heard the defender use profanity or something similar, I would have taken action against her, but because I didn't hear what she said, I really felt I couldn't do anything specific. There were no more incidents. BTW - the home team won by 35.