Hands on Players...By ref

[Camron Rust]

A couple years ago, I had a game there was a resident idiot on one of the teams. He was being a general headache and was just creating trouble. We were keeping our eyes on him very closely. He had a particularly hard foul that we called intentional that had knocked the other player to the floor. The other player was just getting up when the troublemaker was aggressively going to him. Maybe he was going to shove him down again, I don't know. The other player got up before he got there. Seeing this happening, I made it between the players and stuck my hands out to keep the space between them. I ended up shoving the "victim" backwards a few feet as I told him to get away in the process as I was turning towards the troublemaker.

We tossed the troublemaker (flagrant T).

I then went to the other kid and his coach and apologized for shoving him and told him I moved him away from the troublemaker because I didn't want him to get in any undeserved trouble by reacting to the troublemaker. They were appreciative of me keeping them from being drawn into the trouble.

Not always a good idea, but I feel that without my physical intervention that kept them from being close enough together for contact, the "victim" would have been shoved and very likely would have shoved back....all because of a bad apple on the other team.