Advice on how to handle mouthy players

[tomegun]

Originally Posted by Ignats75

I too, address it at our captain's meeting. If I am the R this is my entire speech:

"Gentlemen (or ladies). You have been chosen as captains for your leadership ability. You know who your hotheads are. If you handle them, we won't have to. I only have four rules for you. Respect the game. Respect your opponent, respect the officials and have fun. Good Luck."

While I understand what you are saying (excuse me, I get paid to look at things this way), how are any of those measurable? If you were to say something about sportsmanship and they didn't follow it, you can call a technical foul. If they showed disrespect for you, their opponents or the game, how are you going to enforce it? Yes, it would probably fall into the sportsmanship category which means you could simply say something about...sportsmanship and be done with it. Chances are they aren't listening anyway.

As far as some of the other posts go, I don't think we should tolerate anything from kids. Our instructional chair - a fine gentleman - tells us that we can find 10 players that want to play on any given night. The others will either be eliminated systematically (5 fouls) or immediately (1 technical/flagrant foul).