What high school coaches want

[Freddy]

Originally Posted by just another ref

I just noticed this one. How can I know how the previous game was officiated? And, it may have been a train wreck from start to finish so the last thing anybody wants is to be consistent with that.

This presents a problem most commonly in this scenerio:

Tuesday night game features a crew of three avid ball-watchers. Off-ball fouls abound and are not called--no one sees them. Leads, focused on the dribblers out top, have no clue whether the defenders on the drives had LGP, so they default to "blocks", doing those funky "fists-to-the-hips-spasmotic-chicken-dances" to sell them, regardless the charges that took place. Coaches realize what they have, so they just resort to coaching through it. Then . . .

Friday night game features a crew diligent to observe PCA principles and make their calls/no calls accordingly. Like situations on one end lead to similar calls on the other end. Illegal off-ball antics yield deserving penalties. Coaches, realizing they have a completely different set of expectations before them, wonder aloud, "What is it with these guys? Why can't these crews be more consistent from game to game?"

And I don't blame 'em. But it ain't the Friday crew's fault.

As the observer of the Tuesday game who is now on the crew of the Friday game, I can't help the frustration the coaches are gonna feel. And regarding this I truly do sympathize. But it's not going to change our Friday crew's diligence. It will, however, remind me all-the-more that all the assigning pool of officials as a group got a lot more work to do.