End of game
 

I know the philosophy is that a foul in the 1st QT is a foul in the 4th QT. 8th grade boys, 3rd place game tied with 5 sec left. Team A drives the endline (not very hard) and team B was in legal guarding position until he gave one of those hip checks. In the bonus, hits 1 and team goes on to win by 1. Coach didn't say much about it, but the fans were definitely on us. Saying that was weak. You hate to call a foul like that to decide the game but it is still a foul. I know the proper thing is to call it (my partners call), but would anybody let that go.

And this is important, why?

The crew needs to be consistant. Either it's a call you BOTH would make at either end of the court or not. Period.

Either the player was hip-checked out of bounds or not.

at the end of the game, my only criteria is to make sure that it is a "solid" foul...marginal contact plays get no whistle from me...

If the defender had the dribbler in a hammerlock, some of the fans would have said it was weak.

Do "marginal contact plays" get a whistle from you other times?

Since the only reason you are questioning this call is b/c of the fans I'll go out on a limb and say it was a legitimate foul that required a whistle.

Some would say that all your foul calls should be "solid fouls." Marginal contact plays shouldn't get whistles from you in the first place.

To the OP, you said it yourself, the defender hip checked a player out of bounds. If you believed the hip check disadvantaged the player, then call the foul. Fans will b**ch and moan regardless of what you call. Some fans expect everything short of a cross body tackle to be ignored at the end.

Why do you hate to call it? Would you have called it on the first play of the game.

Change it to "You hate for a kid to commit such a foul to decide the game..."

This statement is your problem.

One call never, ever decides a game. The totality of every single minute does.

Don't give into the myopic behavior of others.

Okay I will reword some things. I never ever care what the fans think. Second, I had no probably with the call. Just saying if I were on the losing end, would hate to lose on foul like that because if it were my team, I would be mad at the player that he was out of position and he forced the official to call it.

And the person I was working with at the time has a tendancy to not blow his whistle loud enough. Makes it difficult to sell the call IF it happens to be questionable to the average fan.

Not to pile on but....

When did we ever have to sell a call to a fan? Or to a coach for that matter? The call sells itself if it's the right call. And that's all we should worry about; getting the call right.

JMHO.....

Don't even worry about that aspect of the game. You are no longer a player, coach, or fan. Be more worried about what your assignor/supervisor/observer/crew chief/mentor has to say to about the calls/non-calls at the end of the game.

+1

but the fans were definitely on us.

if you HADN'T called it, the other team's fans would have been on you.