What should I have done?
 

I am the R2. Team A is getting ready to play their 3rd hit near me. A1 spikes the ball and 2 players from Team B jump to attempt a block. The ball catches nothing but the tape at the top of the net. The ball caroms back to Team A and they play the ball. I give a discreet signal of 4-Hits. I only hold it for a few seconds. I do not want the Coaches from either side to see my signal. R1 allows play to continue (I wonder if he ever sees my signal). Finally the ball hit the court on Team B's side. Point to Team A. Coach for Team B is upset. He complains to me about the 4-Hits. R1 sees this discussion. He give a signal, of rubbing his fingers, indicating that the ball was touched. I know the ball was never touched. Whether or not he knows I gave the discreet signal. Team B's Coach says, "You saw the ball was not touched. Make the call." I 'took the fall' and let the play stand.:confused:
How can I handle this situation properly without embarrassing me or my partner? I did not discuss this play after the match

What you did is all you can do since, as the R2, you're not permitted to blow your whistle on that fault.

There's nothing wrong with the situation itself. You indicated 4 contacts from your view, and your R1 disagreed and communicated with the coach post-rally that he/she had a touch on the block. There's nothing wrong with this.

What makes or breaks if you handled the situation correctly or not is what you responded to the coach with. What did you say to B's coach about the situation?

I told him "the Referee saw a touch".

One of the duties of R2 is to "protect" R1 by not allowing the coach to stand and yell across the court at R1.

You (R2) need to step in and get the coach's attention on you. Even though this was not your situation, it is somewhat related.

In your situation, as Antonio said, you did all you could. Gave a discreet signal to R1, only held it for a few seconds, then let it go.

I would suggest the verbiage - Coach, my partner had a touch on that play.

This reinforces to the coach that the two of you are a team and you are going to back up your partner even if you don't necessarily agree with him/her on this particular call. Using the referee had a touch is subtly distancing yourself from your partner and giving the coach the impression that you may not agree with the call.

One thing you should have done is discuss this play after the match. You should always have a detailed post match discussion to discuss things that happened in the match to insure that you can learn from those situations in the future, both the R1 and you as R2 again. You should also discuss this in your prematch discussion about how to handle certain situations.

But ultimately, that's the R1's decision to make.

zoochy-
as an R2 your job is to provide information.you did exactly what you were supposed to.we are taught a couple of things with regards to this play-
1.if you give help it is supposed to be high-at about heart level
2.when play leaves that side of the net drop your help signal

Andy has it 100% right when it comes to handling the coach in this instance.Your job is to protect your partner whether or not you agree with their call.That is definitely something to go over in your post-match.In mine on Tuesday we had our area president as we were working his daughter's school & said we did everything right that we encountered.
A.Libero serving in the wrong spot
B.Coach not listing a libero on his roster then changing the libero between sets
C.Injury timeout

I'm curious...please elaborate on this.

Ok Felix-
Visiting coach just submitted a roster with singular numbers on them.He didn't have the libero designated with their regular number/libero number.We didn't discover until the third set & didn't penalize him.Just had him make the libero designation on his roster.Unit president thought we handled it correctly.

You let him change the roster and didn't give the other team a point, which is the penalty for changing the roster after the deadline.

Yes Felix-I'm kicking myself for not catching it earlier than I did even though our boss was ok with how we handled it.We did in the same set also penalize the same team for their new libero serving in the wrong rotation & had a injury timeout situation.eventful set huh?

Keep in mind discrete signals are not discrete. We don't care if the offending team sees them, we just hope the other team does not see them. Of course everyone sitting behind the R2 sees them. The important thing to remember is that the R2 is offering an opinion to the R1. The R1 chose to not take it. (I hope he was looking....probably not) Like Felix said, should have been covered in pre and post match. Perhaps there was a touch that you did not see. I have gotten 4's from R2's that I have waved off. I have also not got any help at all when I needed it. Thanks for looking. Lesson learned....Pre-match, Post-match.