Unsporting Conduct @ Tourney
 

Good Morning wise sages of the 🏐 board,
I have a question for you from a tournament I was covering as a reporter yesterday. This scenario occurs under NFHS rules:

A three set match ends with the R1 overruling his line judge. R1 waits for the teams to finish the handshake line before crossing the court to complete his scoresheet and turn it into tournament administration. While he is attempting to finish that sheet the losing team's head coach comes over to the table and proceeds to go off arguing the call for 5-10 minutes. She even engages the R2 (coach from one of the participating teams) and coach of the next team they were scheduled to face. While her assistant was running to the referee's office to grab the head ref she even ranted to a ref on the court to their left during a timeout there delaying the court for another couple of minutes.

My question is under NFHS rules at a tournament where does one contest end and the next begin? Upon completion of the scoresheet and its return to tournament personnel? Coin toss for the next contest? Would this R1 have been within their rights to pull cards postmatch (IMHO she would've earned DQ from me)?

I can't find rule support for this but I remember being told that under NFHS the referee's jurisdiction ended when they verified the score. It's been a few years since I've worked more than a handful of NFHS matches though so I could be misrembering. I know that in USAV your ability to sanction misconduct ends at the end of the last rally. After that it becomes an issue for the arbitrator. That, I learned the hard way [emoji14]

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Under NFHS rules, the officials have administrative jurisdiction till they leave the school grounds. So if the official observes unsporting behavior after the official conclusion of the match as SCSC indicated, officials can and should report the behavior to the state office. This is to allow reporting of incidents after the match is officially over, like in Baseball where we often stop in the parking lot to remove equipment, etc., some parent, coach or player wants to vent after the game, the state office can impose sanctions.

I have only faced this situation once in volleyball. I go by the idea that the match is going until the official signs the official score sheet. Up until the score sheet is signed.

The last part of rule 5-4e states that match becomes official when the score sheet is signed and after that point no changes to the score shall be permitted.

There are two possible implications to this and why sanctions could still be issued up to this point. First, what if the score is actually incorrect, and instead of being 25-23, the real score is 24-23. Now we have an unsportsmanlike conduct issue by the losing coach. The red card is issued and now it becomes 25-23. Second, this type behavior can not be tolerated by coaches. The first red card I issued a coach occurred when I was getting off the stand of a match that was 15-13 in the deciding set. She starting yelling at me during the handshake line.

If the conduct occurs after the score sheet is signed, the state association is getting notified and the as a result, the AD also gets notified about the conduct of the coach. We have an online report in Michigan that electronically gets sent to the state association and the schools.

Watching the whole thing play out live I was shocked that an experienced official did not use his tools to deal with the situation. If it was me that coach would've gotten the magical yellow & red cards together and said bye bye to her team for the day. That's how offensive her conduct was IMHO. I ended up emailing her administrators reporting what I saw and mentioned it in my column.